Moon and Companions

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3d ago 2:15

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A beautiful triangle decorates the dawn sky tomorrow. Two of its points are easy to see: the crescent Moon and the planet Venus, the “morning star.” The final point is a bit tougher: the planet Saturn, to the upper right of the Moon. It’s just half of one percent as bright as Venus, but its proximity to the brighter bodies will help it stand out.

Saturn is about as faint as it ever looks right now. One reason is that it’s just emerging from behind the Sun, so it’s about as far as it ever gets from Earth – more than 950 million miles.

The other reason is our view of Saturn’s rings. The rings span almost the distance from Earth to the Moon, and they’re made mainly of small bits of ice, which reflect a lot of sunlight. But the angle at which we see the rings changes – a result of Saturn’s changing seasons.

Saturn is tilted at about the same angle as Earth. At the solstices, one of Saturn’s poles dips toward the Sun, so we see the rings at their best angle. That makes the planet especially bright.

At the equinoxes, though, the rings are “closed” – we see them edge-on. The rings are no more than a few hundred feet thick, so they all but disappear. That makes the planet look much fainter than average.

Saturn will reach an equinox in early May, so the rings have basically vanished. They’ll slowly tilt back into view over the coming months, and reach their greatest angle at Saturn’s winter solstice – in 2032.

Script by Damond Benningfield

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