Dark Sky News
August 2024
This month’s meeting (Thurs. Aug. 29)
Click here for the SAS Picture of the Month (August 2024)!
Some beautiful globular clusters in the summer sky!
M13 in Hercules : the best of the best!
M92 in Hercules: M13’s little brother
M5 in Serpens: notable for its elliptical shape
M56 in Lyra: tiny at mag. 8.3, thought to be a possible remnant from a past merger between our galaxy and a dwarf galaxy whose nucleus remained as the globular Omega Centauri!
M9, M10, M12, M14, M19, M62, M107 all in Ophiuchus – some pretty small, but some like M12 – simply spectacular!
M22 in Sagittarius: I think this one is almost as beautiful (if not more, in its own way) as M13!
If you’ve never seen the Chinese space station Tiongong, now’s your chance! It will be going from west to east directly overhead @ 8:57PM EDT, taking about 8 minutes to traverse the sky. It will be magnitude -2.2 (a little brighter than Jupiter right now) and pass right by Arcturus and just south of Vega.
Best time for dark sky object hunting and astrophotos!
The Perseid meteor shower will run from July 17 to August 24 and peak around August 12. Look for its radiant point in the constellation Perseus, which will be visible in the sky all night. Under ideal conditions, you could see up to 100 meteors an hour. This year, the First Quarter Moon won’t interfere with observations too much.
- Close approach time: 02:45 GMT (August 20, 11:45 p.m. EDT)
- Close approach distance: 25′ (about the diameter of the Moon)
- 98.4%-illuminated Moon will be close to Saturn (mag 0.7). Both objects will be in the constellation Aquarius