Eat your greens!

Saturn, originally uploaded by eat your greens.

Just got home from work, having set up the Observatory’s LX10 telescope for some visitors in the courtyard tonight, right next to the Prime Meridian of the World. We spent a couple of hours watching Saturn, which looks amazing at the moment. I think we saw its largest moon, Titan, too. As Darren notes, over on the Royal Observatory blog, this month is a good month for planet-gazing. We have Mercury, Saturn, Mars and Jupiter all visible at some point during the night.

No photos from tonight, so I’m making do from an older photo taken with the 28-inch Great Equatorial telescope.

The Cassini team have announced the interesting news that Saturn’s second largest moon, Rhea, may have rings. Comments over on the Royal Observatory blog.

This coming weekend sees the peak of the Perseids meteor shower. Annual meteor showers occur when the Earth’s orbit around the Sun passes through the orbit of a comet. Dust and debris, which the comet has left along its path, burns up in the Earth’s atmosphere. We see the results as shooting stars in the night sky.

Peak activity for this year’s Perseid shower is predicted to reach 80-100 shooting stars per hour before dawn (in Europe) on Monday 13th August. Read more about the 2007 Perseids at the European Space Agency.

From the Royal Astronomical Society press list today:

On the evening of 3 March the Moon will move directly behind the Earth in a total lunar eclipse. This is the only eclipse visible from the UK this year.

The Moon will begin to move into the lighter part of the shadow of the Earth (the penumbra) at 2016 GMT and from that time it will take on a yellowish tint. It will enter the darker core of the shadow (the umbra) at 2130 GMT. The total eclipse starts at 2244 GMT when the Moon is completely immersed in the umbra. Totality will end at 2358 GMT, the Moon will move out from the umbra completely at 0111 GMT (on 4 March) and the eclipse will come to an end when the Moon leaves the penumbra at 0225 GMT.

Although fairly common, total lunar eclipses can be spectacular events. Normally the Moon does not disappear completely but is lit by sunlight scattered through the Earth’s atmosphere and takes on a beautiful brick-red hue. At the time of the eclipse, the Moon will be in front of the stars of the constellation of Leo and from the UK it will be high in the southern sky.

NASA/JPL released new pictures of Saturn from the Cassini mission today, including views from high above, and below, the ring system. See the full set on their web site.

The mpeg movie of a ring crossing is well worth watching, if you have the time to download it.