Welcome to the University of Texas Skywatchers Report for Monday September 21st through Sunday September 27th.
The moon is at first quarter late on Wednesday the 23rd, so we’ll start the week with a waxing crescent moon and then have a waxing gibbous moon for the remainder of the week.
The September equinox occurs at 8:31 a.m. Central Daylight Time on Tuesday the 22nd, marking the start of autumn in the northern hemisphere and spring in the southern hemisphere. On this day, the sun crosses the celestial equator and the amount of daylight and nighttime are roughly, although not exactly, equal and the Sun rises due east and sets due west.
Mercury is low in the west after sunset and will start the week very close to the bright star Spica, but the two will gradually move apart over the rest of the week. Mercury is setting at 8:25 p.m. at midweek.
Jupiter and Saturn are high in the south at the sky darkens and will make a nice grouping with the Moon this week. On Thursday, Jupiter will be above and to the left of the moon and on Friday, Saturn will be above and to the right of the Moon. Jupiter is setting at 1:40 a.m. at midweek, followed by Saturn at 2:15 a.m.
Mars is rising at 8:40 p.m. at midweek and is now at magnitude -2.4 and 22 arcseconds in size and is just a couple of weeks away from closest approach to Earth.
In the morning skies, Venus is rising at 4:10 a.m., about three hours before sunrise.
All public viewing events on UT campus telescopes are on hold for the remainder of 2020. We will update the website outreach.as.utexas.edu with a new schedule when we are able to resume viewing.
While you’re waiting for in-person telescope viewing to resume, you can tune in to McDonald Observatory live streams from west Texas. You can view past events on the McDonald Observatory YouTube channel and you can follow the observatory on Twitter, Facebook and at mcdonaldobservatory.org to be notified of future events.
Thank you for calling the University of Texas Skywatchers Report.
