What's in the night sky in the week of 4 to 10 September, 2023 in our weekly stargazing guide. This week's astronomy highlights: the Milky Way is on fabulous display as the Moon clears out of the evening sky, while the Moon passes close to the Pleiades.
Chris Bramley: Hello and welcome to Star Diary, the podcast from the makers of BBC Sky at Night Magazine. You can subscribe to the print edition for the magazine by visiting skyatnightmagazine.com or to our digital edition by visiting iTunes or Google Play.
Ezzy Pearson: Greetings listeners and welcome to Star Diary, a weekly guide to the best things to see in the northern hemispheres night's sky. As we are based here in the UK, all times are in BST. In this episode, we'll be covering the coming week from 4 to 10 September. I'm features Editor Ezzy Pearson and I'm joined by reviews editor Paul Money. Hello, Paul.
Paul Money: Hello. There is a time for another exciting week of observing.
Ezzy: Ooh, excellent. Do we have some exciting things to look forward to? Please do tell.
Paul: Well, we've got some interesting ones with the Moon again, because the Moon, you know, we always follow the Moon around and it by its definition... Because it takes roughly 29 days to go around us, it's got to go past a whole range of objects and usually it means it's bright planets. And that's what we're gonna start with this week. We've actually got the Moon on 4 September at about 11 o'clock. So look out for Jupiter and Uranus. Well, the Moon nearly forms a triangle. An isosceles triangle, it's slightly off sort of thing. Perhaps leave it later in the night and it will make an isosceles triangle with Jupiter and Uranus. And it's just before, it's going to be last quarter phase, so it's quite bright. So you probably need binoculars anyway to find Uranus. But it's a nice view and again, photographically, it's worth having a go. The moon will be bright, but you can play about. So several different exposures and combine them to produce an interesting picture. So you wanna be looking roughly east, northeast, around 11 o'clock. But bear in mind you do need binoculars to spot Uranus. It doesn't mean to stop you from using the telescope on Jupiter and it's Galilean moons or the Moon itself with all that detail as well. But you know, I like to see Uranus as well, because that's... If you haven't seen Uranus, of course, having the Moon in Jupiter not too far away helps guide you, doesn't it? That's why we like the Moon, and particularly. It tends to guide you to these objects.
Now, 5 September, the next night, the Moon's moved on, but it's a nice conjunction. It's directly below the Pleiades or Messier 45, the star cluster in Taurus. These are the seven sisters. Now with the moonlight, you probably only will see the seven sisters, but the actual moon itself is a half phase and directly below it within a few degrees. As I say, the proximity to the moon will diminish the fainter stars. Binoculars will show a few more, so it's worth having a look with binoculars. But to even in binoculars, you'll get the moon in the view. 10x50s, will actually put the Moon in the view as well. But it's a lovely conjunction with the cluster itself. And the thing is, over the years, The Moon has an inclined orbit. And this processes around the earth. So we have phases where the Moon is a long way from the Pleiades and that's when it passes through the Hyades star cluster. Now we're gradually inching back. It's getting closer and closer to the Pleiades and in the next few years we might start seeing actual occultations are some of the stars of the Pleiades. So it's always exciting when I see the Moon getting close to the ply theses, 'cause I think they're quite amazing to watch. Because you don't just get one occultation, you've got the Pleiades there.
Ezzy: Exactly.
Paul: Lots of stars.
Ezzy: Lots of things.
Paul: Quite bright stars, lots of them. So you get quite a few occultations. So I'm looking forward to that. And so this, this gets me excited seeing the Moon, getting this close to the Pleiades star cluster.
Ezzy: And is the Pleiades going to be.... are the Moon imply going to be getting closer over the, the coming months, or is this sort of as close as they're gonna get?
Paul: They'll be getting closer. There'll be periods when they get closer over the coming months. And then over the next few years we'll see actually creep even closer and start to encroach upon the Pleiades themselves. So it'll be interesting because Jupiter is slowly moving through and within a year or two, actually Jupiter will be in the same view. Oh, can we jump ahead a couple of years?
Ezzy: Well, I was just gonna, because that sounds to me like it's a good photo opportunity in and of itself. You know, you've got the Moon next to the Pleiades two very beautiful objects, but also if you are keeping track of it over the course of the several months and several years, you've got a long track of showing the Moon, passing over this very distinctive area of sky. I think that'd be a really cool thing to do.
So if anybody's looking for a project at home, I always like to give other people projects. That might be one for you if you are looking for something.
Paul: Now, the next evening, as you can imagine, the Moon doesn't stand still. Well, it orbits or doesn't it? So it carries on. Now it's actually late night into the early hours of 7th, the last quarter, the, so this is technically the last quarter moon forms a triangle this time with the Pleiades star cluster and Aldebaran which is the brightest star of the Hyades star cluster sort of thing, but it's not. Is it? Because it actually, it's a line of sight effect.
It looks like it's part of the Hyades, but in actual fact it's half the distance. So it's just a line of sight phenomenon that we actually see. But we've got this Moon forming this triangle now with the Pleiades, the Hyades as well. And in particular the red eye of the Bull, Aldebaran seen. So that's late night of 6th into the early hours of the actual 7th
This is a really good time now because the Moon's in the morning sky, we can actually see the actual dark sky in the evening. So now we're into September, really have got dark skies. So we can actually look at the Milky Way. And the Milky Way is roughly about nine o'clock in the evening. It's going from the south.
You've got Sagittarius, Scorpius in the Southwest and you've got the band of the Milky Way moving up, straddling the whole sky, but you've got the summer Milky Way. Well, on view with things like the Summer Triangle, you've got the milk away running down with ... if you've got a dark side, it looks like there's dark patches that it's... And they genuinely are dark patches. They are dark clouds of dust in the Milky Way. One of them is the Cygnus Rift. Very prominent indeed. And you've got lots of star clusters to pick up. Messier 11 and Messier 24, which is a large star cloud, as well. There's loads of them. Nebulae Messier 17 and Messier 8 and I say the Cygnus Dark Rift amongst others as well. There's loads of globular clusters in this region. Because globular clusters surround the galactic core, so Ophiucus... Scorpius, Ophiuchus, right round. You get right round down to Capricornus and Aquarius. You've got a load of globular clusters, Messier 15 for example. Messier 2 .Things like that. So this is the time, you've got a week or so as we approach new Moon to actually watch out and look at the deep sky and let's hope we have some clear skies as well. Because that does help, don't it? Otherwise you can't see anything.
Ezzy: Mm-hmm. Yeah. So that is unfortunately we will always be at the whims of the weather, but hopefully. We should have some good... at least a couple of good nights coming up in September.
Paul: And that's often all we need is like, especially if we reviewing equipment, we almost pray for them. So we need a clear sky please sort of thing, you know, pray to whichever God you believe in. But please, let's have some clear skies.
Ezzy: Just a couple of hours.
Paul: It's quite dire at times. We've had quite a wet summer, haven't we? Really sort of thing. So we could do with some. Now we mentioned Venus the other week is back into the morning sky. September 9th in the morning sky. You wanna be looking around about 5:00 AM. Venus, you can't mistake, it's the brightest object other than the Moon and the Sun. So you can't mistake that. A look for Venus and a just under a degree above it is the star cluster Messier 67. It's effectively in conjunction. This is a great time to grab a cluster and use a planet to guide you to the cluster. And it's a nice little cluster, but it's so far away from Messier 44, the Beehive Cluster that just tend to get a bit overlooked. And again, people tend to look at the Beehive Cluster. So Venus is just under half a degree south of Messier 67. So do have a look at that sort of thing. Just this is just as twilight is beginning. Sort of thing, but it means it's high enough up so that you can actually see it without the obscuration of the thick atmosphere lower down when it's actually first rising.
So there we are. So that's 9 September in the morning sky, as I say. But we'll stay finally in the morning sky for our final target the next morning, 10 September. Now September the 10th itself doesn't sound particularly spectacular. But we're following the moon again, and it's actually not quite, but almost in a line between Kappa Geminorum and Pollocks.
Now, Castor and Pollux are the two main stars of Gemini. So Gemini is now, well, I say it's amazing how much of the sky we're getting back now, the winter sky. Earthshine will be visible on the Moon. So you've got this nice sort of light grouping of stars. You've got the Moon, Kappa you've got Pollux, and you've got Castor directly above as well. So that's 10 September. Look for about three o'clock in the morning for for that. So there we are.
Ezzy: So certainly got quite a few things to be getting on with this week. Thank you very much for taking us through them all Paul.
Paul: It's my pleasure.
Ezzy: But just to summarise those again: on 4 September, the Moon will be forming a triangle with Jupiter and Uranus. On the 5th, the Moon is directly below the Pleiades. On 6th, going into 7th, the Moon will form a triangle with M45, the Pleiades and the star Aldebaran. On the 8th, it's a great opportunity to look at the Milky Way. The Moon will be out of the way into the morning sky. So in the evening, it's a great time to have an explore around the Milky Way. Lots of things to see there. On the 9th Venus is in the morning sky near to M67, and finally on 10th the Moon will be between Kappa Geminorum and Pollocks in the constellation of Gemini. So lots of things to look forward to. If you want to make sure you don't miss out on any of the upcoming star gazing highlights to see in the night sky, do be sure to subscribe to the podcast and we will see you back here next week.
If you want to find out even more spectacular sites that will be gracing the night sky this month. Be sure to pick up a copy of BBC Sky at Night Magazine, where we have a 16 page pullout sky guide with a full overview of everything worth looking up for throughout the whole month. Whether you like to look at the moon, the planets, or the deep sky, whether you use binoculars, telescopes, or neither, our Sky Guide has got you covered with detailed star charts to help you track your way across the night sky. From all of us here at BBC Sky Night Magazine, Goodbye.
Chris: Thank you for listening to this episode of the Star Diary podcast from the makers of BBC Sky Night Magazine. For more of our podcasts, visit our website at www.skynightmagazine.com or head to aCast, iTunes or Spotify.
