Moon Phases October 2024 (Eastern Time)
New 1st Quarter Full (Harvest Moon) 3rd Quarter
2 10 17 24
Meteors: Orionids peak October 21-22
The Orionids meteor shower, "The Orionids" for short, is one of two meteor showers associated with Halley's Comet (Comet 1P/Halley). The Orionids are called that because the point in the sky from which they appear to radiate, called the "radiant" of that shower, lies in the constellation Orion - actually several degrees NE of the red supergiant Betelgeuse (one of Orion's shoulders). However, when they are zooming into our atmosphere like bugs on a windscreen, they can be seen over a large area of the sky. The Orionids shower begins around October 2 and continues through November 7, but peaks around the nights of October 21-22. These are best viewed in the hour or two before dawn, when Orion is higher in the SE sky, rather than earlier in the night.
Cross-Quarter Day and end of DST early November
The "autumnal" equinox, occurring at 8:44 am on September 22, marked the start of the fall season in the northern hemisphere, but Daylight Savings Time doesn't end until November 3rd (always on a Sunday, so you have a chance to adjust before going in to work). The cross-quarter day this year falls on November 6th - midway point between the autumnal equinox and the winter solstice.
A Comet, Perhaps...
Mid-October will bring Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS to the evening sky. It is a bit more than 20° northwest of Venus on the 13th and 14th. Look for it in binoculars; if it obeys the optimistic estimates, perhaps it could even be naked-eye visible. As you might guess, newly-discovered comets rarely obey brightness estimates (erm, scientific wild guesses?).
Planets: Sunset, Night and Dawn
We are having weather, with more forecast for the coming weeks, active hurricanes making it a challenge to see much of anything in the night sky. However, if you get a chance to glimpse the SW horizon just after sunset on October 5, you will see a lovely crescent moon with a brilliant point of light just above and to the right of it: Venus. Our "Morning star/Evening star which is really a planet" is the early evening planet at the start of the month: Venus is the bright one low in the West-Southwest after sunset. Brilliant Venus will dominate the lower western sky after sunset nightly throughout October. By the 25th, Venus will be 3° north of brilliant red giant star Antares, the brightest star in Scorpius, dimly visible in evening twilight. From around October 21 on, Mercury will join Venus in the very eraly post-sunset sky, as a tiny point of light low to the horizon between Venus and where the Sun recently set (look west-southwest around 7:15 pm Oct 22-31, if you have a flat western horizon).
At the beginning of the month, the planet Saturn is already well above the eastern horizon once it's fully dark out: roughly symmetrical with Venus in the SW and Saturn in the SE. The bright star to Saturn's lower right is the lovely southern hemisphere star, Fomalhaut. By month's end, Venus will be well down toward the horizon by 8 pm but cream-colored Saturn will be high in your SW sky, with bright Fomalhaut still below it and to the right.
Around midnight at the start of the month, Jupiter will join the SE sky and then a bit more than an hour later Mars will follow it: Jupiter will rise almost 2 hours earlier by month's end, as each day that passes changes Earth's position in its orbit by 0.98 degrees, which is about 4 minutes of "solar time" (the kind we live by). So 30 days is about 120 minutes of "earlier" for a given star's rising. Jupiter's no star, but it doesn't move all that fast in its orbit, so that's about right. Mars, on the other hand, can move fairly fast from Earth's point of view depending on where we are in our relative orbits: by mid-month, it will be rising two hours after Jupiter, and nearly 3 hours later than Jupiter as the month winds to its end.
The Stars of Summer Still Transitioning to the Stars of Winter: Summer Triangle to Winter Hexagon
On any evening – from now through the end of fall – you'll be able to spot the famous Summer Triangle just after dark, which at our latitude passes practically overhead at its highest point of the night. Made of the brightest star in each of three constellations, it's an easy-to-see large triangle in our summer-to-late-fall skies. It’s quite high above the southern horizon as the sky darkens on September evenings.
The three bright stars are (from west to east to southernmost): Vega in the constellation Lyra (the Lyre), Deneb in the constellation Cygnus (the Swan), and Altair in the constellation Aquila (the Eagle). Each star will rise a few minutes earlier each day, so the Summer Triangle will start each night just a bit farther to the west than it was at the same time the night before.
However, by the 6th just after midnight, you will see the bright stars of winter above your eastern horizon, with the constellations Orion (with bright stars Betelgeuse and Rigel) and Taurus (with brilliant Aldebaran), followed soon by Orion's two famous hunting dogs, the bright "dog stars," Sirius (in Canis Major) and Procyon (in Canis Minor), plus Castor and Pollux in Gemini, and Capella - the bright star in Auriga. Six bright winter stars surround Betelgeuse [pronounced BEEtle-juice] in what is nicknamed the Winter Hexagon.
Planetarium
The picture associated with this blog post is from our planetarium Grand Re-Opening celebration. Our wonderful donors (and the dedicated audiences of Mesmerica) made this renovation and newly-more-comfortable seating possible: Cosmic Thanks to all of you! Each day we are open, we show two different planetarium shows, and odd day shows are different from even-day shows, so there are four different shows each month that alternate. On Sundays (the "Science Sundays" extra show), there's an additional "audience choice" show at 3:15, and on First Sunday we have a Sensory Sunday special show, so you have the potential to see nine different shows in the course of the month. Despite trail flooding after each very heavy rain, the whole nature center, planetarium, butterfly aviary, raptor aviary and trails complex is open six days per week, closed Mondays. This month, if you are planning on hitting the trails, bring your umbrella and waterproof boots, though... just in case. Hoping to see you soon at the Center!
-- Heather Preston, Planetarium Director
Comments