You see it with your own eyes.. the most important astronomical events that you can follow in the month of Ramadan

The month of Ramadan this year, with its mild spring weather, can be an excellent opportunity to contemplate some important astronomical events, especially since the most beautiful of them falls during the dawn period, when Muslims in Arab countries are awake to eat the Suhoor meal.

Charming conjunctions

In fact, the month of Ramadan this year gives us a wonderful window to contemplate various astronomical events, the first of which is the conjunction of the moon with Aldebaran and Pleiades on April 5th.

To see it, you can only go out into the sky at night, after breakfast is finished, and at nightfall.

The conjunction of the crescent moon with Aldebaran and Thuraya on April 5 (Stellarium)

In this case, you will see the beautiful crescent standing between a bright red star, this is Aldebaran, a large red giant currently in its last stages of life, and a basket of faint stars close to each other in a hook-like assembly, that is the Pleiades, a star cluster An open space containing about 800 to 1,000 stars about 410 light-years away from us.

This is followed, on the evening of April 9, by another beautiful passage of the moon next to two bright stars, the capitate twin Pollux and the capitate twin Castor of the twin constellation Gemini, in this case the surface of the moon is slightly more than half lit, in the first square phase. Almost.

April 9, the crescent moon is associated with the stars of Ras Deployment and Ras of Forward Twin (Stellarium)

The whole scene will be amazing when you see it with your own eyes, just raise your head to the sky any time between evening and midnight.

It will also be interesting to know that the head of the stern twin contains an orbiting planet, called "Thestias", located at a distance of one and a half times the distance between the Earth and the Sun, and twice the mass of Jupiter.

Suhoor events

All of the above astronomical events were in the evening after breakfast, but we will move on to events that you can see during the Suhoor period, the most important of which will extend during the last ten days of Ramadan, which is the dance of the planets, during which 4 bright planets will meet in the night sky at dawn: Jupiter, Saturn, Mars and Venus, And you can see it all with your own eyes.

Between April 24 and 29, you will see 4 bright planets in the dawn sky: Jupiter, Saturn, Mars and Venus (Stellarium).

The best time to see this wonderful event will be after the dawn prayer, whatever your local time, and you will see the planets line up in one line starting high from Saturn and then descending gradually, the moon joins between 24 and 28 April for this scene and adds to it beauty.

Another interesting scene will take place at dawn on April 20, when the moon will stand atop one of the brightest stars in the sky at that time of night, Antares.

Antares is a super red giant, if it were the size of a soccer ball, the sun would be the size of a grain of rice or a little bigger.

It is about 550 light-years away from us, which is a safe distance for us Earthlings. If this star exploded one day, we would be completely unaffected by that explosion.

At dawn on April 20, you will see the moon, the highest star near Scorpio, and near them the star Al-Shula (Stellarium).

Next to this scene, you can see another less bright star, which is the Shula, which bears the same Latin name in contemporary star atlases (Shaula) and the word is of Arabic origin, and means what scorpions lift from their tail, stinger or needle, and it is also one of the punctuation marks and takes the same shape. and draw like this (,).

Another sight that you can enjoy during the Suhoor period is the Lyrid meteor shower that we will all see on the evening of April 22, when meteors fall at rates of up to 20 meteors per hour in remote areas far from the city’s lighting.

Meteor showers occur when the Earth, during its usual rotation around the sun, passes the remains of an asteroid or a comet.

In particular, the harpsichord will fall with the moon, so we may not be able to see many meteors, but in any case try to get out before dawn to the sky and watch it, you may see within an hour 5-10 meteors, which is a good number.