Stargate! Saturn's big day! - 09.14.

Stargate: In today's colorful hustle and bustle, the astronomical program locations of the Svábhegy Observatory can be freely toured at your own pace. If you definitely don't want to miss out on this buzzing stargazing bustle, in addition to our tickets sold on site, you can also buy your ticket online well in advance.

Let's see what we are preparing for this afternoon and evening:

17:00-18:00 Daytime astronomy

The Stargate opens at 17:00! Both the Telescope Workshop and the Observation Terrace have the Sun in the main role! With our solar observation telescopes we can admire the sunspots of the setting Sun, and with our Hydrogen Alpha telescope we can admire the wonderful solar flames of the Sun's atmosphere!

In the Budapest dome at the same time, we can admire the planet Venus behind the Sun. The 88% nearly full disk of Venus glows brightly and dances in the colors of the rainbow in our telescope giant.

17:00-21:00 Interactive programs:

Before dark, we prepare several scientific, interactive, entertaining programs closely related to astronomy:

The Conquest of Saturn lecture reveals how the Cassini spacecraft uncovered the secrets of the solar system's most breathtaking ring system, and how the Dragonfly mission plans to fly into the atmosphere of the giant moon Titan!

The smell of the moon Titan: Saturn's giant moon Titan has a dense, orange, opaque atmosphere. What kind of fragrances drones sent to Titan will have to circulate in the future, we can experience with our own noses by sniffing into the flasks of our Planetary Sniffing Lab!

Let's make cryogeyser! During our program, we will make the chillingly cold giant cryogeysers erupting from Saturn's moon Enceladus under terrestrial conditions, on a field table. Expect chilling outbursts and fumes!

In our meteorite analysis program, we examine the rainbow-colored crystals of stones fallen from the sky with our microscopes. Moreover, we can get our hands on many pieces of our meteorite collection.

Spacetime We use glass balls racing on trampolines to model the movements of planets and stars.

In our Spectrum Zone you can find many illuminating optical devices and light bending devices. This really promises to be a colorful program.

Plush Planet Solar System program we will get to know all the planets and their most well-known moons. In fact, with the help of the children, we build a distance-proportional plush model of the solar system. Constellation puzzle: This time, the most beautiful constellations and star legends come to life not in the sky, but in our Observatory. We are counting on the diligent participation of the children in this as well!

Local History Walk: We can get acquainted with the romantic life of astronomers and the most exciting stories of our centuries-old research institute on this walking tour. I wonder what the old telescope giant witnessed

20:00-23:00 Evening astronomy:

The observatory will be conducted at four locations: the Budapest dome, the Observation Terrace, the Telescope Workshop and the Observer's Telescope.

Until 20:30 we will be looking at the most beautiful double stars in the darkening sky. Albireo is the star that represents the head of the constellation Swan, which in binoculars is a colorful, beautiful pair of stars with an orange main component and a bluish companion! The double double of Epsilon Lyrae is a real celestial speciality, the loose double star splits into two more close doubles!

From 9:30 p.m., the celestial rings and lunar craters play the main role!

Inspired by the rings, the Budapest dome telescope giant observes the Saturn Nebula named after Saturn (NGC 7009). The tiny bluish planetary nebula does indeed draw a disk and rings visible from its edges in our telescope at hundreds of times magnification.

The Ring Nebula (M57) expands like a miraculous cosmic ring in interstellar space after being blown off by its fuel-losing parent star.

We observe the planet Saturn in the Budapest dome, the Telescope Workshop and the Roof Terrace with our large telescopes. Seeing the Queen of the Planets is a defining experience in everyone's life! On the rapidly rotating, flattened giant planet, brownish-red cloud bands parallel to the equator can be observed. And the ring, slowly visible from its edge, runs around the planet's equator like a pin-sharp knife blade.

The international Detect the Moon! at night we also wander into the wonderful landscapes of the swollen moon. In the brightly gleaming Aristarchus ray crater, the sun is rising, illuminating the bright moonslides on the crater rim. At the flat bottom of the Gassendi crater, filled with lava, alarms can even be observed. Schiller, the crater giant of the southern terra region, will float in our telescopes like a special, extremely elongated crater. In our telescope workshop, with the help of our mobile phone adapter, anyone will have the opportunity to take their first ever photo of the Moon.

20:30-23:00 Star legends in the early autumn sky:

In the framework of a laser constellation tour we wander among the most beautiful constellations of the early autumn sky. In addition to Greek star legends, legendary Hungarian and distant exotic star tales also come to life!