On April 26, a particularly beautiful conjunction can be observed in the night sky, during which the rising Moon comes into close proximity to the star Antares, the Svábhegy Observatory announced on Tuesday.
After 11:00 p.m. on Friday, the Moon will be in a close conjunction of 36 arcseconds with the brightest star of Scorpio, the red supergiant of magnitude 1, the star Antares, the announcement said.
According to the information, the star Antares will rise in Budapest at 11:00 p.m. in the southeast, and the 91 percent phase, nearly full moon will follow in about 5 minutes.
To observe the special moonrise, you need an open and clear horizon. At such an observation point, even with a simple hand-held telescope, Antares near the horizon, shining in all the colors of the rainbow, and the proximity of the reddish-colored lunar disk, flattened by atmospheric refraction, will offer a special sight – they wrote, adding that the pair will be easy to observe with the naked eye around midnight.
The interesting thing about the conjunction is that while it looks like only a close approach from Hungary, in the more eastern regions of the Earth, the Moon will also cover Antares.
According to their announcement, Antares is often mistaken for the planet Mars because of its reddish color – hence its name of Greek origin: Anti-Árés, i.e. Anti-Mars. Antares can flicker in all kinds of other colors near the horizon, but it only appears that way because of the refracting effect of the Earth’s atmosphere.
The celestial body is also special from an astrophysical point of view: it is a huge red giant star with a diameter 800 times that of the Sun.
A detailed account of the alignment and its observation can be found in the Svábhegyi Csillagvíszgaló blog post (svabhegyicsillagvizsgalo.hu).
MTI
