In the Sky This Month

Venus is returning to view as the brilliant “morning star.” It is quite low in the east as twilight paints the dawn sky. Venus will stand well below the crescent Moon tomorrow, and closer to the right of the Moon on Tuesday.

Daylight Saving Time ends tonight. We’ll set our clocks back an hour as we revert to Standard Time. The standard time zones were formalized just 100 years ago, when Congress adopted the zones set up by the railroads decades earlier.

Gamma Piscium is moving across the sky faster than almost any other visible star. It is the second-brightest member of Pisces, which is in the east and southeast at nightfall. Gamma Piscium is part of a pentagon of faint stars at its top right corner.

Regulus, the bright heart of Leo, stands close to the upper right of the Moon at first light tomorrow. The best measurements to date say the star is about 79 light-years away.

Today is Halloween, an astronomical cross-quarter day. Such dates occur roughly half way between an equinox and a solstice. In many calendars, such a date marked the beginning of a season, not its middle.

For the second time this month, the Moon is at last quarter. It is three-fourths of the way through its cycle of phases, headed toward “new” on November 7. There’s no special name for two quarter moons in the same month.

One of the prime stars of summer continues to dazzle in the autumn sky. Vega is quite high in the west at nightfall. It’s the brightest member of the Summer Triangle.

The planet Mars stands about a third of the way up the southern sky at nightfall, shining like a bright orange star. It sets in the wee hours of the morning.

One sure sign of autumn is the early evening appearance of Cetus, the whale or sea monster. As befits a whale, Cetus is huge, but its stars are faint and difficult to see. Cetus climbs into view in the southeast a few hours after sunset.

Sagittarius, which resembles a teapot, is low in the south and southwest at nightfall. A giant star cluster lurks near the star that connects the lid and spout. Through binoculars, NGC 6624 looks like a fuzzy star. A telescope reveals many individual stars.