Actual Astronomy - The Observer's Calendar for September

Observing the lunar eclipse

0:00It's the 365 Days of Astronomy podcast, coming in 3, 2, 1. Observer's calendar for September, better put that in, 2026 on episode 549 of the Actual Astronomy podcast.

0:32I'm Chris, and joining me is Shane. We are amateur astronomers who love looking up the night scan. This podcast is for everyone who enjoys going out under the stars. You know who should go under the stars more, Shane? Who? Is the board of the RISC. I think they spend too much time in board meetings discussing things that they have no right discussing. I'm going to leave it at that. Did you see the lunar eclipse? I sure did. Yeah, it was, you know, like any lunar eclipse, kind of a slow moving, but it was at a good time for us.

1:04Like, I forget when it started, but, you know, it kind of was earlier evening. And it was a little, like, transparency wasn't good, at least for my location. There was a little bit of cloud or something up there. And I felt like it took away from being able to see kind of that reddish hue. And certainly I could see, like, the dark portion of the moon while it was being eclipsed and kind of the brighter crown there. But I really wasn't able to get color from my location. So, but it was neat to see.

1:36They always are. And I'm glad I did it. How about you, Chris? I just should say, first of all, because we are cutting in maybe just a little bit. And the reason is, is that we're having a really big thunder and lightning storm here right now. And it may impact the quality a little. But we will persevere, eh? Yeah, oh, yeah, for sure. Awesome. Yeah, I was able to see most of it. Although, like, I don't think it ever went, like, totally 100%.

2:08I think it was like a 95% or 98% eclipse or something like that. Yeah, yeah. It wasn't 100% for us. So, I think that's why we didn't quite get the color tones. And it's interesting what you say about the clouds. So, I'm in the south of the city and you're in the north of the city. And it is quite a distance apart by at least a dozen kilometers, straight line it's set anyway. But down by me, they were harvesting. And it was causing these giant, like, bog banks almost of grain dust.

2:43And then some of them were going, like, up into the air. And they were kind of going sort of up and behind me. So, I didn't, you know, really see it as any sort of cloud in the sky. It was a little bit hazy around it. But when you're saying there's cloud, I'm like, what are you talking about? There's no cloud. You know, you're looking over top of me. So, what's, like, what's going on? And I think what you must have been seeing is those big plumes of grain dust. Because they were dense. Because we drove through when we went to the grocery store that evening.

3:14And it was like, you could only see, like, 100 meters in front of you. It was, like, that dense. Yeah. Yeah, there's definitely something up in the sky. Like, it was kind of hazy. It was just weird. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I saw the haze. But, and then, yeah, we had seen all this grain dust just as it was starting. And, yeah, we just watched it from the deck and went for a walk and watched. It was quite nice. Could see a little bit of the red. But, yeah, it was really cool to see. It was just kind of cool to be out.

3:44I don't know that I've ever done that before. It was just a beautiful evening despite the little bit of haze. And to go for a walk and then to be able to see, to be able to see it just sort of taking place where you're kind of, you know, casually strolling around the neighborhood, right? It was quite lovely. Mm-hmm. Really, really good. Any other observing here? Remember, we recorded last week. So I guess we've talked about the star party and all the wet weather I had down there. So, yeah, yeah, which was unfortunate.

4:17And then I had a little bit of an illness that kept me from doing much. But we'll see. We'll see how it goes. We're kind of into some weather right now. It was clear many days this past week, but I just didn't have an opportunity to get out. Yeah, same. Yeah, I'm working on some stuff at work. And it's, like, very tiring. So I just, at night, just kind of laking out a little bit.

4:43So let's see.

September meteors and double stars

4:45Coming up here in September, we have the Origids peaking on September 1st. Now, the moon's just going to be getting out of the sky. And this one is not, like, a really big event that takes place. You just get about 10 meteors an hour. But, you know, one thing I always enjoy at this time of year, even though the moon will be up a little bit, is, you know, if you're out observing, then you're going to be able to see some of these meteors just every once in a while streaking by.

5:16It's just quite beautiful to see when you're looking at the nighttime sky. Mm-hmm.

5:23Double star. I think, is that Lambda Delphinus? That one? I'm not sure. Maybe. Yeah. Not familiar with that one. That is on the list for this month. But M27, MSE27, which is a planetary nebula just up in Volpecula, I think, is well-placed this month. That is a planetary nebula. It kind of looks like an apple core. Yeah. Yeah.

5:53That's a neat one to look at. And then we have Venus coming up in the morning sky. It's going to be 1.7 degrees south of Spica on September 2nd. We need to see Venus and Spica near one another in the nighttime sky because Spica is sort of a brilliant white, at least to my eye. And then you should be able to see that in a wide-field, low-powered telescope. Yeah, for sure. For naked eye, they might look somewhat similar.

6:23Venus should be quite a bit brighter. But, yeah, they're both kind of white, and that'll be a neat view. Yeah. Less than two degrees apart. So that's about like your index finger pointed at the night sky apart, I think, give or take. So it's pretty close together. Yeah. Something like that. Not much further than that. September 3rd, the 4th is the last quarter moon.

6:54Not the 3rd, but the last quarter moon is on September 4th. And on the 5th, we have the Lunar X visible. Getting a big rain shower right now. So I don't think it's going to come through, but there's a lot of lightning and a lot of rain. Do I still have you, Shane? Yeah, for sure. Okay, great. On September 6th, we have the Alberta Star Party and Mars 3 degrees south of the moon in the morning sky.

7:27Moon is also at parity. You know, Mars is starting to come around now. I don't think it's ready to observe yet, but as it gets larger and larger, certainly have more on that. And NGC 6781 is well placed, as is B142 and should have 143 there as well. That's Barnard's E up in Constellation of Aquila. What is NGC 6781? That's a planetary nebula. It must be one of the finest NGCs, but 11.5 magnitude there.

8:02Also up in Aquila and sort of in the northern side. Looks pretty cool. Like a halo, circle, giant donut. Yeah, also known as the snow globe nebula. I wonder why. I guess maybe because it has a whole pile of, it's in a very rich star field, looks like. Yeah, and it's kind of circular. So, yeah, I can understand that. Huh. I can't remember.

8:32I don't know that I've seen that one yet. I'm sure it must be on my list. I'll have to check. My list is that I'm observing all of H.D. Curtis's planetary nebulas that he put into a catalog back in 1918. I think there's 72 or 78 or something like that. Barnard 142, 143, also up in Aquila. These are dark nebulae. And this is one of my favorite sets of dark nebulae, discovered by Edward Emerson Barnard or E.E. Barnard.

9:05And what's cool about B142 and 143 is they form an E in the nighttime sky. And if you're under a really dark sky, even with a pair of binoculars, this one shows up as an E superimposed on a background star field. It's very cool to look at while we're tracking now. Yeah, it's awesome. One of the better dark nebulas to look at. Yeah. Really need that dark sky, though. So, Carbon Star W. Orionis is at its best in the pre-dawn sky on September 6th as well.

9:40September 7th is Labor Day, and around the 6th, 7th, that's when we start to get back into the dark sky slash new moon period chain. I'm pretty excited for this. Yeah, how come? Well, just because it's going to be clear, right? There you go.

9:57We've certainly had all the bad weather at this point, and, I mean, it's really rolling through here now. But, yeah, I'm going to take a little bit of time off to do hopefully a lot of observing. If you're off or whatever, welcome to join us as well. So, M71 is well-placed. M71 is an open cluster up in the constellation of Sajita the Arrow. It's right in the center of it, right along that main line of stars, and often thought to be, originally thought to be a globular cluster, I think.

10:29Or it could even end up reversed. I can't recall exactly, but that's kind of a neat open cluster to look at. As well, carbon star HK Elyra is well-placed in the evening sky and well-visible on September 7th, meaning that Marie Noonan has calculated that this is the best time to track down that carbon star from the carbon star list. Got to track that one down. I've looked at W. Orionis, but HK Elyra, I don't know.

11:03I think I have, now that I think about it. But I've got to go through them all one year and just do all these carbon stars and do, like, a proper set of observations of, like, those 25 or 35 best ones in the nighttime sky. This weather is distracting, though. The trees are, like, going in front of me. It looks like a little hurricane out there.

11:24Pretty wild.

Planetary nebulae and dark nebulae

11:25September 9th, we have NGC 6905, well-placed in carbon star RV. The monostros, well-placed in the morning sky. That's one of the better ones. I've seen that quite a few times. And zodiacal white starts coming back in in the morning sky at this time of year. So that is also pretty exciting. Yeah, definitely. I need a bit of a dark sky. Blue flash.

11:50Sorry? Yeah. Blue flash nebula is NGC 6905. So that's another planetary nebula up just between Delphinus and Volpecula. Not sure which side of that it actually falls on. I'm just getting, like, flash after flash after flash of lightning here now. It's pretty crazy. Okay. So September 10th, we have the new moon. And Uranus is stationary nighttime sky.

12:22And the old crescent moon is in the east before sunrise. And M39 and M29 are well-placed. These are open clusters way up overhead. I think they're in the constellation of Cygnus, if I'm not mistaken. And then on September 11th, we have the Veil Nebula, well-placed in the evening sky. September 12th, NGC 7000, which is the North American nebula, is well-placed just off of the Bright Star Deneb and the constellation of Cygnus.

12:57And then moving on down, we have NGC 6946, well-placed in the nighttime sky. I'm going to look that one up and see which one that is. Oh, this one. This is one of my favorites. I should have known. But so NGC 6946 and NGC 6939. NGC 6946 is the fireworks galaxy. And it goes right up overhead at this time of year. And it's only like about a degree or so away from an open cluster called NGC 6939.

13:29And the fireworks galaxy is a spiral. And it goes right up overhead. And it's really a beautiful spiral galaxy to see even in like an eight-inch or larger telescope. And I've spent a long time looking at this in the open cluster next to it because my friend Graham, who I used to observe with in Nova Scotia, he had these two objects. These were his two favorite summer objects. So at some point every summer, but, you know, towards the end of summer, I take a look and think of him. Sadly, he passed away about 10 years ago.

14:05And we're back after a unexpected 30-minute break.

14:12Oh, well. Had some bad weather come through there, Shane. Yeah, it was really coming down. Yeah. Yeah, that was wild. So my internet is line of sight. And you couldn't see anything because it was so heavy. The rain was just like a giant wall of water for about 30 minutes there. So back to it. September 14th, we have Venus a half degree away from the moon. And I'm guessing that is in the evening sky.

14:44We also have IC 5146 well-placed in the evening sky. Do you know what that one is, Shane? No. Pretty sure. That's the cocoon. Yeah. So this one here, it's at the end of this big dark lane. The dark lane is called B139 or something to that effect. And this is a very tough and challenging target to see. Need like a good nebula filter, really clear skies, need to have it directly overhead.

15:16But it's up in Lacerda just between Cygnus and Cephas there. It is tough. So I have suspected it like in my 5-inch. But in the 7-inch, I can say that I've seen it. But it's pretty tough. And I think it's difficult because it's just in this rich star field. It's hard to tell what are stars and what are nebulae. But the nebula filter slide works pretty good at sussing it out. Right on.

15:47Have you seen that one? It's tough. I don't think I have.

15:52Carbonstar U-Signi is also well-placed in the evening sky. That one is well visible. And NGC 6819 is one of these great NGC objects to take a look at. This one here is an open cluster, sort of just above the cross of Cygnus there. This one's pretty good. I was looking at this one. I think I did a sketch of it last year. And I think I chatted about it last autumn.

16:26It was well-placed.

Equinox and planetary viewing

16:27Really great object. September 17th is the first quarter moon. And September 18th, we have Venus at its greatest illumination extent.

16:39And then the lunar straight wall is visible on the evening of the 19th, which is the lunar. That's the it's like an escarpment, isn't it, Shane? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's yeah, kind of an escarpment that really becomes visible with the right lighting at the right time of the month and becomes very prominent. Awesome. And then two shadows are also visible on Jupiter on September 19th as well.

17:10On the 20th of September, you can try following Capella, a nated eye, into the daylight sky that week. And that's kind of a neat one to try as well, because Capella, it's the brightest star in Auriga. And you'll be able to see that coming up in the morning sky. And then as you're as you're watching it, you know, you can sort of watch your clock. Make sure you're careful not to look anywhere towards the sun and see if you can follow that into the daylight sky.

17:41September 22nd, we have the autumnal equinox right at midnight. So kind of it's just over the line of getting into midnight and eastern daylight time. Also on that evening, the jeweled handle is visible on the moon. And on September 24th, we have the crater Billy. Is it Billy or Bailey? Is it well placed on the moon? I got to look this up because I don't think there's a crater Billy on moon or is it Bailey?

18:13I think it might be a spelling error. There is a Billy.

18:20I'm like blown away by this. Have you ever heard of the crater Billy? I'm just reading about it now on Wikipedia. But prior to this, I can say no. It was named after French mathematician Jacques de Billy. Huh. There's also a crater Bert. Well, how come there's not a crater Chris and Shane, eh? Well, yeah. Agreed. That's the... Well, geez, we've learned something new today. I mean, I don't want to go out and look at this crater on the moon and have somebody come up and say, hey, Chris, what are you looking at?

18:56And I can say, I'm looking at Billy. That might get the police on your doorstep. I think they're already coming for me. And then we have... It's still visible on the next night, too. But on the 25th, Neptune is at opposition. Are you a fan of the classical composer Holst? A little, yeah, yeah. And you've heard his symphony on the planets? I have. Well, there's only...

19:26What? There's Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus in a symphony. Oh. Did you know that? There's no Neptune.

19:45Get it? Nep. Tune. Tune. Oh, okay. Okay. You got me there. Like, no, Neptune's in there.

19:56Classic, classical humor. There you go.

20:00Hard to see much on Neptune. Kind of looks acmerine in the scope, eh? Yeah. And even with that, you typically need a little more aperture. I'm not sure if you'd see color in a three-inch or not. Maybe. But it'd be a little bit tough. Yeah. I'd say eight-inch. September 26th, we got the full moon slash harvest moon. Sure looked like a harvest moon the other night, Shane, as the combines were harvesting below the full moon. Yeah, no kidding. It is a neat moon, though, this time of the year when you can watch it rise and it just looks so large when you have, like, Earth things, you know, to kind of contrast the size of it and or compare the size of it.

20:41It's kind of neat. It's kind of neat. Two shadows visible on Jupiter on the 26th as well around 11 o'clock p.m. just before Eastern time. Mayor Oriental visible, Crater Unstein, and the carbon star B, Cygni, is well-placed and well-varied. I mean, because they're variable stars. These carbon stars need to catch them in the right phase to see them best, and Marie figured that out. So, I think they're kind of at their brightest when she put them in there. September 27th, we have some good planetary viewing opportunities.

21:19Let's see. What is going on here? The September 30th, we have the asteroid 192 Natsuka at opposition, which is going to be at magnitude 8.4. Just going to look that one up really quick. Asteroid. And this asteroid here is a large Stony Belt asteroid discovered by Austrian astronomer Johan Pelesia on February 17th, 1879.

21:51Wow. That's pretty cool. That is cool. I like looking at those asteroids. It's been a while since I've looked at some. Going to try doing that sometime soon again. So, I think we touched on the planets here real quick, but I'm just going to go and take a breeze and see what we are looking at in the evening skies for September for the planets. Looks like just as the sun is setting, we got the moon and Jupiter pretty close together during the, I guess, like the 7th and 8th of the month.

22:29And then, oops, sorry, that's in the morning sky around 5 o'clock in the morning on the 7th and 8th. We have those two together. And then if I kind of just pop back around to the evening sky. Yeah, it looks like we have Saturn rising just about 9 o'clock, Neptune just a little bit before. So, that's cool because by the time we get into September here, Shane, around sort of midnight hour, 1 o'clock in the morning, Saturn is going to be relatively high.

23:03I think it only gets up to about 30 degrees or so during this apparition. But we'll start to get into a bit of a Saturn season soon. So, I know you'll be looking forward to that. Yeah, for sure. I love Saturn. I always enjoy looking at it. And the rings will be starting to tilt out again. So, that'll be nice to see. Funny. For me, it's the rings with Saturn as well.

23:28Who knew? Who knew? Who knew?

Patreon hat giveaway and credits

23:31All right. Let's see. Anything else for this month? Oh, I know. We were giving away those hats that I found. Right. Yeah. R-A-S-C hats. Yeah, I got a couple. Made of wool. They're quite warm. I have one and it is one of my go-to observing hats slash toque. But it's not a go-to hat. It's a manual hat. Yeah, that's fair. You have to. You don't need batteries for this one. Not this one. But you have like battery-powered clothing, so this really isn't a joke.

24:03No, it's quite possible actually. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So, yeah. If you want – what do people have to do to get in on the draw? I can't remember. Did we make – you have to be a Patreon supporter. Just a Patreon supporter. We haven't picked a date when we'll draw, but maybe we'll give everybody – Before the first snowfall. We're going to draw on the first snowfall. So, that could be any day now. That could be any day now. Well, it's like 30 degrees today again, even though it's raining. But you never know around this place. But typically around mid-October, we get our first snowfall on average-ish.

24:38Yeah. Yeah. Not too far away usually. I think that's what we'll do. So, you know – yeah. We'll do it around mid-October. I think that's what we'll do, regardless of whether there's snow or not. But, yeah, that gives everybody enough time. And, yeah, we'll do it in October and announce it in one of those episodes. Please subscribe. Share the show with other stargazers you know. Send us your show ideas, questions, or observations to actualastronomy at gmail.com. You are listening to the 365 Days of Astronomy podcast.

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