Titan nears Saturn as Dione skims past<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\nTitan, Saturn\u2019s largest moon, was near the planet yesterday and remains close to its parent world today as it moves through its 16-day orbit. Visible in the early-morning sky, Saturn is highest in the sky (in the south) around 4 A.M. local daylight time. Through a telescope, the planet\u2019s rings always take center stage. We are now looking \u201cup\u201d at the planet and get a great view of its southern hemisphere, including the southern side of the rings, which are tilted nearly 9\u00b0 to our line of sight.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Titan shines at mid-8th magnitude and this morning sits northwest of Saturn, nearly a full arcminute away. It is moving westward, pulling farther away from the planet as time goes by. Closer in, several smaller, fainter moons may be visible. Tenth-magnitude Tethys, Rhea, and Dione are the brightest of these. This morning, Rhea sits east of Saturn, with Dione and Tethys to the west; Tethys is closer to the ringed world than Dione. It is also getting closer, approaching the planet\u2019s southwestern limb. Around 5:40 A.M. MDT, Tethys disappears into the planet\u2019s shadow, just a few arcseconds away from the limb. Its disappearance is visible in the western half of the U.S. only, and is best seen along the Pacific Coast, where the sky is still darkest.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Sunrise:<\/strong> 6:18 A.M.
Sunset:<\/strong> 7:47 P.M.
Moonrise:<\/strong> 4:43 P.M.
Moonset:<\/strong> 12:36 A.M.
Moon Phase:<\/strong> Waxing gibbous (77%)
*Times for sunrise, sunset, moonrise, and moonset are given in local time from 40\u00b0 N 90\u00b0 W. The Moon\u2019s illumination is given at 10 P.M. local time from the same location.\u00a0<\/p>\nAlison Klesman<\/strong>\u00a0is senior editor of\u00a0Astronomy\u00a0magazine. She holds a Ph.D. in astronomy and has studied a variety of topics, from minor planets to supermassive black holes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Back to Article List Saturn\u2019s largest moon lingers near the ringed planet, as 10th-magnitude Tethys prepares to disappear…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":650489,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[77],"tags":[18,19,17,2209,133,75779],"class_list":["post-650488","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-eire","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-observing","tag-science","tag-sky-tonight"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/117138477361670285","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/650488","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=650488"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/650488\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/650489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=650488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=650488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=650488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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