| 2024 Sep 17: Occultation of Saturn (2023-12-31) ⬅︎ |
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On September 17, Saturn will be occulted (covered) by the Moon in the Starry Hill region. This will start at 4:08 AM (ingress) and end at 5:00 AM (egress), lasting just 52 minutes. This rare event will happen only because Saturn and the Moon will be in the same direction from us. Of course Saturn is much further and that is why it will be occulted and not the Moon.
Saturn will appear far smaller than the Moon simply because it is so much further from us. Even with Saturn close to opposition (September 7), it will still appear tiny. How much smaller? Considering that the Moon is about 30' (arcminutes) or 1800" (arcseconds) in angular size, and Saturn is just under 20" (arcseconds), Saturn will appear about 90 times smaller.
An interesting question is this: is the Moon moving past Saturn or is Saturn moving past the Moon? It's the Moon doing most of moving. In fact, the Moon is the fastest natural object in our sky moving at about 30' per hour. That's why the occultation will last nearly an hour from Starry Hill.
The Moon (magnitude -12.2) will be over 100,000 times brighter than Saturn (+0.6) possibly making Saturn difficult to see naked-eye due to the Moon's glare. If you have a telescope or binocular, this would be a great time to use it to watch this spectacular event.
The occultation will be visible from only certain parts of Earth including Starry Hill and the US west coast. This is because the Moon is so close to Earth and can vary by as much as 2° in our sky depending on location. And, of course, only locations experiencing night at the time of the occultation will be able to see it. The purple zone on this map shows where you must be to see the entire occultation.
Let's hope for clear skies for this rare and not-to-be-missed event! |
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