{"id":84238,"date":"2025-09-25T05:55:06","date_gmt":"2025-09-25T05:55:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/84238\/"},"modified":"2025-09-25T05:55:06","modified_gmt":"2025-09-25T05:55:06","slug":"the-sky-today-on-thursday-september-25-pallas-stands-still","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/84238\/","title":{"rendered":"The Sky Today on Thursday, September 25: Pallas stands still"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t\tBack to Article List\t\t<\/p>\n<p>\n\t\t\t\tThe asteroid Pallas reaches its stationary point in Aquila the Eagle, near the bright star Altair. It now ends its retrograde path and begins moving prograde once more.\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"620\" height=\"416\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Pallas09252025.png\" class=\"attachment-large size-large wp-post-image\" alt=\"\"\/><\/p>\n<p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\tAsteroid 2 Pallas comes to an apparent standstill in the sky in Aquila tonight. You can find the main-belt world a few degrees southeast of Altair. Credit: Stellarium\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Asteroid 2 Pallas, at 10th magnitude, exhibited a stationary position at 7:00 A.M. EDT within the constellation Aquila.<\/li>\n<li>Pallas&#8217;s location was approximately 6.5\u00b0 southeast of Altair, Aquila&#8217;s brightest star (magnitude 0.8), within a single binocular field of view.<\/li>\n<li>Pallas was observed in close proximity (5&#8242;) to a similarly bright field star, situated to the west;  it was predicted to resume prograde motion, moving south and slightly east.<\/li>\n<li>Relevant astronomical data for a specific location (40\u00b0 N 90\u00b0 W) included sunrise\/sunset times of 6:51 A.M.\/6:51 P.M. EDT, and moonrise\/moonset times of 10:41 A.M.\/8:23 P.M. EDT with a 14% waxing crescent phase.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Asteroid 2 Pallas is stationary at 7 A.M. EDT in the constellation Aquila. At 10th magnitude, this space rock is a bit of a challenge, but should be visible through amateur scopes.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Aquila itself is hard to miss \u2014 its brightest star, magnitude 0.8 Altair, anchors one point of the huge Summer Triangle asterism and dominates northeastern Aquila. Pallas is not far from this star, about 6.5\u00b0 (one binocular field) to its southeast.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Note that the main-belt world is just 5\u2019 from a field star of similar brightness. If you spot the two points of light together in your optics, Pallas is the easternmost object of the two. Previously moving westward, or retrograde, against the background stars, Pallas will now make a turn back toward the east, resuming prograde motion. If you come back over the next few nights, you\u2019ll see Pallas pull away from the background star, moving south and slightly east as it makes a slow, shallow turnaround in the sky.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>Sunrise:<\/strong>\u00a06:51 A.M.<br \/><strong>Sunset:<\/strong>\u00a06:51 P.M.<br \/><strong>Moonrise:<\/strong>\u00a010:41 A.M.<br \/><strong>Moonset:<\/strong>\u00a08:23 P.M.<br \/><strong>Moon Phase:<\/strong>\u00a0Waxing crescent (14%)<br \/>*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 12 P.M. local time from the same location.<\/p>\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\">For a look ahead at more upcoming sky events, check out our full\u00a0<a style=\"box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; color: rgb(0, 87, 138); transition-duration: 0.04s; max-width: none;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.astronomy.com\/tags\/sky-this-week\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Sky This Week<\/a>\u00a0column.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Back to Article List The asteroid Pallas reaches its stationary point in Aquila the Eagle, near the bright&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":84239,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[77],"tags":[18,19,17,2209,133,2210],"class_list":{"0":"post-84238","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-eire","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-observing","12":"tag-science","13":"tag-sky-today"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84238","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=84238"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84238\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/84239"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}