Transcript
The spring and summer of 2015 featured lots of evening planets, but as autumn begins, Venus, Mars, and Jupiter are prominent in the morning sky. Saturn, however, continues to look spectacular in the evening sky.
But September’s star attraction lies closer to home. The Moon takes center stage three times this month. In the first act, our satellite passes in front of 1st-magnitude Aldebaran — Taurus the Bull’s brightest star — before dawn September 5. Observers along a line that runs from the western shore of Lake Superior to Florida’s east coast will see the star emerge from behind the Last Quarter Moon’s dark limb as the pair rises. The farther north and east of this line you live, the higher the two objects will appear. From New York City, for example, they stand 11° above the eastern horizon when Aldebaran returns to view at 12:40 a.m. EDT.
The Moon passes in front of a much bigger and brighter star September 13. The target this time is the Sun, and Luna obscures part of it for people in southern Africa, southern Madagascar, and parts of the Indian Ocean and Antarctica. The best sites on land for this partial solar eclipse are around Cape Town, South Africa, where the event starts shortly before sunrise and peaks at 5h43m UT. The Moon then blocks 30 percent of the Sun’s surface area.
The Moon’s final and most impressive act arrives the night of September 27 and the morning of the 28th when it dives deep into Earth’s shadow to create a spectacular total lunar eclipse. Observers across most of North America will see all 72 minutes of totality the evening of the 27th. Viewers in most of Europe, Africa, and the Middle East will witness the eclipse before dawn on the 28th.