The stars that outline the Celestial Sea line up across the southern sky on October evenings. The array consists of five water-related constellations: Capricornus, Piscis Austrinus, Aquarius, Pisces, and Cetus. Among the planets, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn all are in good view.
The full Moon of October is known as the Dying Grass Moon or Hunter’s Moon.
Apogee October 2, 29
Perigee October 16
Moon phases are Central Time
A pretty little semicircle of stars crowns the sky on spring and summer nights: Corona Borealis, the northern crown. It’s high in the east as night falls, and stands overhead a few hours later. In a couple of months, it will be overhead at nightfall.
While the Moon orbits Earth and Earth orbits the Sun, the Sun isn’t exactly standing still. In fact, it’s racing around the center of the Milky Way galaxy, carrying Earth and the other planets with it.
The faint constellation Lynx is in the west and northwest at nightfall. It’s above Pollux and Castor, the twins of Gemini, which are almost due west, and brighter Capella, the leading light of Auriga, the charioteer, to their lower right.
The Moon will be “new” tomorrow as it passes between Earth and Sun, so it will be hidden in the Sun’s glare. And even if the Sun wasn’t in the way, there wouldn’t be much to see. It’s night on the lunar hemisphere that faces our way, so the Moon is dark.
The twins of Gemini are dropping feet-first toward the western horizon as night falls. One of those feet is marked by a small, faint smudge of light: the star cluster M35. It is about 2,500 light-years away and contains about 150 stars.
Vulpecula, the fox, rises in late evening. The constellation is quite faint. Its brightest star — a red giant more than 200 light-years from Earth — is visible to the unaided eye only from a dark location, away from city lights.
The planet Venus, which blazes as the “morning star,” perches quite close to the crescent Moon at dawn tomorrow. Venus is the brightest object in the night sky other than the Moon, so you can’t miss it.
Look for the Moon before sunrise tomorrow, with Venus, the “morning star,” to its lower left. Despite its moniker, Venus is a planet, not a star. In fact, it’s our closest planetary neighbor, passing as close as 27 million miles away.
The Big Dipper is high in the north as night falls, standing upside down. If you line up the two stars at the outer edge of the bowl and follow that line to the lower right, the first bright star you come to is Polaris, the North Star.
Vega, one of the harbingers of summer, peeks above the northeastern horizon by around 9 p.m. Vega is one of the brightest stars in the night sky, and one of our closest stellar neighbors, at a distance of about 25 light-years.
