(SNES) Uranus approaches HD 205829

[Albireo54@aol.com]

Hi everybody,

As most of you know, tomorrow night while we're at FDO Uranus will be passing 
VERY close to the 7.20 magnitude star HD205829. At 8 PM, Uranus will be just 
7 arc seconds south of that star, and outshining it by four times. 7" is only 
about twice Uranus' apparent diameter, and just separating the two will 
require a modest telescope at medium power. 

Of more interest to observers to our south is an event taking place at 10:01 
PM, when that star will be occulted by Uranus' largest and brightest moon 
Titania. This is a rare event indeed, and may provide clues to a possible 
Titanian atmosphere. We will miss the occultation from FDO, but by only about 
0.1"! This is far less than the resolving power of even great telescopes, so 
Titania will be invisible to us as it passes almost directly in front of the 
star, which is over 400 times brighter than Titania. Observers in the 
occultation path, however, will see the star quite suddenly wink out, and 
remain invisible for just over 1 minute - during which time Titania will be 
visible in large scopes.

By the way, did you notice that Sky & Telescope got the day wrong? Roger 
Sinnott writes that the event will take place on the night of Sept 7 / 8, 
which is correct, but he identified those dates as Saturday night and Sunday 
morning! He must have been looking at the Universal Time for the event 02:00, 
9/8, and failed to make the proper time correction. Rather embarrassing!

I was looking at Uranus with my 8" scope last night (yikes, what a horrid 
play on words!) when the separation of the star and planet was just 4' - they 
made a rather interesting sight. Tonight at 9 PM the two will be only 2' 
apart - just over twice the diameter of Jupiter near opposition. Take a look!

Doug Stewart
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