Thursday 06/July/2023 – 03:09 PM
The Astronomical Society in Jeddah announced the association of the waning gibbous moon with the planet Saturn, at dawn tomorrow, Friday, corresponding to July 7, 2023.
And the association said: Before midnight today, Thursday, July 06, 2023, and until before sunrise, tomorrow dawn, Friday, the conjunction of the waning humpback moon with the planet Saturn, and two degrees will separate them towards the southeastern horizon in a beautiful view in the sky of the Arab world.
Moon conjunction with Saturn today
And the association added: Saturn looks like a medium-bright star to the naked eye, and since the apparent distance between the moon and Saturn is relatively large, they will not appear together in the field of view of the telescope, but this can be done through binoculars.
And she continued: Saturn is the second largest planet after Jupiter, its diameter is 9 times greater than the diameter of the Earth, and like Jupiter, Saturn consists of gas, mainly hydrogen and helium, and it is the sixth planet in terms of distance from the sun, and it is the farthest planet in our solar system that can be easily seen with the naked eye as a point. golden.
Features a loop system
And she continued: Saturn is distinguished by a wonderful ring system that can be seen only through telescopes. The main ring covers almost the distance between the Earth and the Moon, and it is only one kilometer thick.
And she continued: Saturn’s rings reached their maximum inclination towards Earth in October 2017, when their northern side was at the peak of its clarity, and since that time the view of the rings has become narrower from our perspective on Earth, due to several reasons.
She explained: The angle of Saturn’s rings changes over a period of 29 years, the time it takes for Saturn to revolve around the sun once, due to the inclination of Saturn’s axis of rotation relative to the plane of its orbit.
And she confirmed that the inclination of the axis of rotation of Saturn is 27 degrees, which means that the rings sometimes tilt towards the Earth and sometimes they tilt away from the Earth, and when the rings tend towards the Earth we can see them in their widest range, but when the rings tilt away from the Earth, and it reaches 0 degrees we can Just see a thin edge of it and that will happen in 2040.
The 29-year cycle of Saturn’s rings is a fascinating phenomenon that allows us to see the rings from different angles, and is a reminder of the vastness of space and the timescales in which astronomical events occur.
