Loading...

Meteor showers are active in September, so we enter a bit of a lull after the excitement of August. Meteoric dust from thousands of comets passing over the eons is visible before dawn as the zodiacal light as sunlight reflecting off the dust creates a faint glow. You'll need a very dark eastern horizon with no street lights nearby. Higher elevations get a better view too. The zodiacal light appears as a faint cone-shaped glow aligned with the ecliptic. On September mornings, well before dawn, the high angle of the ecliptic benefits of it. The broad face of the glow is in Leo as that constellation rises and narrows higher in the sky through Cancer and Gemini. Catch it on moonless nights in the third and fourth week of September for the darkest skies. This excerpt is from Astronomy magazine September 2025 page 29. So, definitely look forward to seeing you again soon. After the new moon, after the 21st, you may be able to catch a very thin sliver before that. So this weekend you may want to start looking for that zodiacal light in the early a.m. hours. You do have a comet, comet C 2024e1, which is passing through the constellation of Corona Borealis high to the west in the evening. Mid-months will be the easiest time to allow this monster comet shining around 12th to 10th magnitude and 8th scope or greater. And dark skies will be good to view it. So get out those big scopes and see if you can find that little comet. We got a partial solar eclipse coming up on the 21st. This eclipse is visible from New Zealand plus a thin strip of Australia's eastern coast of various Pacific islands and parts of Antarctica. So if you're traveling south, you may want to check that out. You'll have the longest lunar eclipse occurred since 2022. We had that back on the 7th. If you got to see that images on the internet, that was on the opposite side of the world than the Earth. So that is it for the local astronomical news. This is KI-9. I'm KI-9. Control for the Colorado Astronomy net.