Four times the fun: See quadruple transit of Saturn's moons

William Atkins
Thursday, 19 February 2009 18:32

Science - Space

February 24, 2009 marks the time to see a rare glimpse of the moons Titan, Mimas, Dione, and Enceladus move across the face of their mother planet Saturn. As an added treat, see Comet Lulin streak across this same darkened sky only a few degrees away from Saturn.


According to U.S. astronomer Keith Noll, of the Hubble Heritage Project within the Hubble Space Telescope Science Institute, “On Feb. 24th, there's going to be a quadruple transit of Saturn's moons. Titan, Mimas, Dione and Enceladus will pass directly in front of Saturn and we'll see their silhouettes crossing Saturn's cloudtops—all four at the same time." [NASA (2/19/2009): “Spectacular Photo-op on Saturn”]

Backyard astronomers will get a chance, along with professional astronomers, to see four Saturnian moons transit in front of their mother planet. What a photographic opportunity!

Astronomers state that people in eastern Asia and Australia will have the best chance to see the event, as they observe it the evening of February 24, 2009.

Others with very good possibilities of seeing the four-moon transit are those people along the Pacific coast of North America, including Alaska and Hawaii—they’ll see it early in the morning of February 24.

An animation of the quadruple transit is found on the same Science@NASA website mentioned earlier in this article.

Dr. Noll comments on the rarity of a quadruple transit of Saturn . He says, "They only happen every 14 to 15 years when the orbits of Saturn's moons are nearly edge-on to Earth." [NASA]

Page two tells when to look up in the sky to observe this rare event in our Solar System.