Space-ing Out: September Happenings (2020) + Bonuses
A guide through the September sky: happenings visible with the naked eye, or a low-powered telescope.
Supplementary Material
September 2020 Star Chart
Click the image to be taken to a printable PDF star chart of the September 2020 sky, which also lists astronomical events to look for this month!
Soviet Venera Space Probes, and the First Images of Venus
The first probes to successfully make it to the surface of Venus and take images were the Soviet Union’s Venera-9 and -10 probes. These were the first probes that successfully took images of an alien (non-Earth) planet’s surface. They landed on Venus on October 20th and 23rd of 1975 respectively. Venera-9 transmitted data that was compiled later into a panoramic image of Venus’ surface (this image in particular by Don P. Mitchell).
Panoramic images compiled by Don P. Mitchell from Venera-9 data
Coloured image compiled by Don P. Mitchell from Venera-13 data
However, when talking about the soviet probe that imaged Venus’s surface, most people refer to the Venera-13/14 mission of March 1982. This mission produced the first coloured image of an alien planet’s surface, which is much easier for media outlets to get people excited about. The capabilities of the camera were also significantly greater, in terms of image resolution.
All of these probes had short lives. The Venera-9, -10, and -14 probes transmitted data for about an hour, and Venera-13 surprisingly lasted two hours. Venus’s surface has corrosive gasses, powerful winds, atmospheric pressure around 90 times greater than Earth’s, and extremely high temperatures: around 900 degrees Fahrenheit! All that would make for a short-lived ANYTHING!
As an additional note, I came across a sound clip from Venera-14. The 1982 Venera mission contained microphones in the probes to record the sounds of Venus’s winds to try to assess the wind speed on Venus. Now, I know it just sounds like wind, as if your phone was recording while in the midst of a hurricane. But I find it incredibly interesting because it’s wind on another planet— something we wouldn’t have been able to hear otherwise!
PLEASE BE AWARE! The initial sound of the audio is very loud.
Additional Images and Information: Soviet Venus Images
Brian May, and the Zodiacal Lights
Brian May, co-founder of Queen, completed his doctoral dissertation (his thesis) on the zodiacal lights in 2007. This earned him his PhD, which he had started back in 1970, but hadn’t yet finished due to taking a thirty-five year break to play for the rock band Queen.
I can’t promise that it will be the easiest read, but I promised I would post something by him on the zodiacal lights. Fortunately I was actually able to come across the thesis that earned him his PhD.
“A Survey of Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust”
Minor Amendments
The Earth is closest to the Sun during the northern hemispherical winter. However, the Earth is not necessarily at its closest point to the Sun at the winter solstice. Perihelion (the point at which the Earth is the closest to the Sun in its obit) occurs about two-weeks following the winter solstice. Likewise, the Earth is furthest from Sun during the northern hemispherical summer, but is not necessarily at its furthest point from the Sun at the summer solstice. Aphelion (the point at which the Earth is the furthest from the Sun in its obit) occurs about two-weeks following the summer solstice.
When I was discussing the French Republican Calendar during the live stream, I stated that, presumably, the French Republican Calendar’s New Year was on the ecclesiastical equinox (the equinox as recognized by the Christian church). However, that wouldn’t make much sense considering the point of the French Republican Calendar was to remove religious and royalist ties. After doing more research, I learned that the French Republican New Year instead, fell on midnight of the astronomical equinox.
When answering the question about whether someone would see the same sky in Indiana as someone would see in Pennsylvania, I left out a crucial point: while anyone in the United States will see the same stars, the time of special astronomical events changes depending on someone’s home time zone. This also means that a special event happening in our nighttime sky may not be visible to someone on the opposite side of the globe, because they’ll be experiencing daylight at the time of the event. During shows, I’ll specify that I’m using either EDT or EST (Eastern Daylight Time, or Eastern Standard Time), so one would have to convert times accordingly to get the correct times for their location.
