2023-08-10 14:47:00
Saturn and its ring, shower of shooting stars and the Milky Way: the 33rd edition of the Night of the Stars, an annual star-gazing event for the general public, will take place this weekend in France under the sign of celestial dust .
Some 534 events are organized Friday, Saturday and Sunday on more than 400 sites across France, announced Thursday the French Association of Astronomy (AFA), organizer of this open-air festival, in free and open access.
During the 2022 edition, nearly 190,000 people visited astronomy clubs, planetariums, associations… where animators offer star gazing using instruments or the naked eye.
“The Night of the Stars is also an opportunity to organize your own little vigil on your deckchair, in a clearing at the end of the field or on your balcony”, explained Olivier Las Vergnas, president of the AFA, during the a press conference at the National Center for Space Studies (CNES).
The conditions: clear skies free of light pollution. It is therefore necessary to move away from cities and proscribe all direct light (mobile phones, car headlights, street lamps …) “because our retina takes 10 to 20 minutes to reconstitute”, he explained.
Saturn and its ring, “the most emblematic object of dust”, will reign over the entire sky. The gas giant will be visible to the naked eye (to the east) but if you want to observe its ring and its natural satellite Titan, you will need a small telescope.
Jupiter, the largest planet in the solar system, will also be there.
The public will be able to admire in places the Milky Way and especially the rain of shooting stars from the Perseids, a swarm of dust from an old comet (109P/Swift-Tuttle) that the Earth crosses each year during the first half of August .
The spectacle of debris from the comet encountering the atmosphere will be visible worldwide, but more spectacular in the northern hemisphere.
The peak of activity will be reached in the night from Saturday to Sunday, with one shooting star per minute.
Shooting stars are of scientific interest “because they connect us directly to comets”, underlined Lucie Maquet, astronomer at the IMCCE (Institute of Celestial Mechanics and Ephemeris Calculation) of the Paris-PSL Observatory.
Comets were formed in the early days of the solar system in very cold regions (Kuiper belt and Oort cloud). “The matter that composes them has evolved little, so studying this dust allows us to understand the birth of the solar system”.
webSetThe Night of the Stars program
10/08/2023 14:46:29 – Paris (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
#Saturn #ring #dust #starring #Night #Stars