Adrian Dening's Stars Over Somerset

Friday, 24 October 2025 11:29

Monday 27th October to Sunday 2nd November 2025

This coming week, we have a period of occultations. Sounds like some series of sinister black magic rituals, but in astronomy terms, an occultation occurs when one celestial body hides another.

On the evening of Wednesday 29th, our target is Saturn. Aim your telescope towards the gas giant a bit before 8.30pm, when it will be located towards the south.

Although Saturn's dust rings are not currently well-placed for observing, a number of its many moons will be obvious. Keep watching and you should be able to see the largest of Saturn's Moons, Titan, being gradually occulted by the planet.

The following evening, Thursday 30th, look towards the south west at 10pm to see a 62%-lit waxing gibbous Moon against the backdrop of the constellation Capricorn. The Moon will be getting close to the magnitude +3.7 star Nashira in the constellation. Just before 10.30pm, the Moon occults Nashira.

Remember that the Moon appears as a disc, but being in a gibbous phase, you can only see 62% of the surface facing us lit by sunlight. This means that Nashira will disappear before the illuminated part of the Moon gets to it and at the beginning, it is occulted by the dark bit of the Moon's surface that you can't actually see!

You won't get this effect with the Titan occultation because planets that are further away from Sun than us don't exhibit phases and we always see them as single points of light.

www.starsoversomerset.com

Screenshots courtesy of Stellarium