FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 30

■ At dusk this evening the crescent Moon shines in the southwest only about 2° from Antares (for North American viewers), as shown below. As always, the Moon's configuration with stars nearby may differ a bit depending on your location and time.

Moon crossing Scorpius and posing with Antares, Sept. 29-30, 2022
The waxing crescent Moon, having passed the head of Scorpius, shines with Antares early this evening.

The head of Scorpius is that near-vertical row of three stars to the right. The middle one, Delta Scorpii, is brighter than it's plotted here, second only to Antares. The database for these charts comes from before Delta nearly doubled in brightness in July 2000. It could fade back to normal like this at any time but it hasn't yet.

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 1

■ The waxing Moon hangs in the southwest as twilight fades to darkness, off the left edge of the chart above. Use binoculars to look 10° below the Moon, and perhaps a bit left, for what will probably be your last sighting this year of the Cat's Eyes, the attractive pair of stars in the tail of Scorpius. At this late date the Cat's Eyes are tilted even more than usual, with the fainter one lower right of the brighter one. They're 0.6° apart.

Left of the Moon is the Sagittarius Teapot, also tilting ever further.

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 2

■ First-quarter Moon (exact at 8:14 p.m. EDT). The Moon shines inside the Sagittarius Teapot at about the farthest southern declination we can ever see it. Use binoculars to pick out the Teapot's stars through the moonlight if you need. Note: The Teapot is 14° wide, at least twice as wide as most binoculars' fields of view. So sweep around a bit.

MONDAY, OCTOBER 3

■ After dark, look just above the northeast horizon — far below high Cassiopeia — for bright Capella sparkling as it rises. How soon Capella comes up, and how high you'll find it, depends on your latitude. The farther north you are, the sooner and higher.

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 4

■ The Moon is two days day past first quarter. Which means its moving terminator has unveiled the unique Straight Wall, a giant fault crossing Mare Nubium casting a stark, linear black shadow. Explore it and its surroundings with Chuck Wood's "Exploring the Moon" article and photos in the October Sky & Telescope, page 52.

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 5

■ Vega is the brightest star very high toward the west these evenings. Face west and look way up.

To Vega's right or lower right by 14° (nearly a fist and a half at arm's length), look for Eltanin, the nose of Draco the Dragon. The rest of Draco's fainter, lozenge-shaped head is a little farther behind. Draco always eyes Vega as they wheel around the sky.

The main stars of Vega's own constellation, Lyra — faint at 3rd and 4th magnitude — extend to Vega's left by half as far as the distance from Vega to Eltanin.

■ Jupiter's Great Red Spot should transit Jupiter's central meridian (the line down the middle of its disk from pole to pole) around 11:10 p.m. EDT; 8:10 p.m. PDT. The spot should be visible almost as easily for about an hour before and after, in a good 4-inch telescope if the atmospheric seeing is sharp and steady.

Jupiter rotates fast; the Red Spot transits about every 9 hours 56 minutes. But not quite like clockwork! It drifts east or west in Jupiter's atmosphere somewhat irregularly. A change often becomes detectable to visual transit timers over a span of some months. Our transit-time predictions are based on fairly recent observations, but don't be surprised if the Red Spot has taken it into its head to move several minutes off schedule.

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 6

■ Vega is the brightest star very high in the west at nightfall. Arcturus, equally bright, is getting low far beneath it. The brightest star in the vast expanse between them, about a third of the way from Vega down to Arcturus, is Alphecca, magnitude 2.2, the crown jewel of Corona Borealis. Alphecca is a 17-day eclipsing binary, but its brightness dips are too slight for the eye to see reliably.

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 7

■ Perseus is up in the northeast after dark now, including the eclipsing variable star Algol, Beta Persei. This evening Algol should be at its minimum brightness, magnitude 3.4 instead of its usual 2.3, for a couple hours centered on 11:12 p.m. EDT; 8:12 p.m. PDT. Algol takes several additional hours to fade and to rebrighten. Comparison-star chart.

■ Mercury is beginning its best week of 2022 as a dawn object. On Saturday morning look for it low due east about 60 to 40 minutes before your local sunrise, as shown below.

By the morning of the 8th, Mercury has become an easy catch low in the brightening dawn.

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 8

■ The Moon and Jupiter cross the sky together tonight. They start in the east-southeast, as shown below.

Moon passing Jupiter, October 7-9, 2022
Jupiter is a little past its opposition. When the Moon shines close to it on the 8th, the Moon is a little before its own opposition (it's full on Sunday evening the 9th). Why do the Moon and Jupiter appear together on opposite sides of their oppositions? Because the Moon (circling Earth) always moves eastward against the stars, while planets near their oppositions are always moving westward.

 


This Week's Planet Roundup

Mercury this week is on its way to a good morning showing. Look for it very low due east as dawn brightens. Binoculars help. Mercury brightens rapidly, from magnitude +1.0 to –0.5 from October 2nd through 9th. That's a four-fold increase in brightness.

Venus is lost much lower in the sunrise.

Mars, magnitude –0.7 in eastern Taurus, clears the east-northeast horizon around 10 p.m. and gains altitude for the rest of the night. Mars is four times as bright as Mars-colored Aldebaran, magnitude +0.9, sparkling to its upper right. Look a similar distance above Aldebaran for the Pleiades.

Mars is 12 arcseconds in diameter and growing. The best time to observe it telescopically is before dawn when it's highest. Mars will be 17.2 arcseconds across when closest to Earth on December 1st.

Mars on August 28th, imaged by Gary Walker. South is up. The South Polar Cap is currently tipped out of view, but the white North Polar Cap is showing, though small. Pale clouds contribute to the whiteness there. The two darkest streaks are Mare Sirenum (left) and Mare Cimmerium.

Jupiter is just past its opposition on September 26th. As twilight fades, spot it glaring low due east. After dark Jupiter dominates the east, blazing at magnitude –2.9 in dim Pisces. It climbs higher across the southeast and stands at its highest in the south around midnight.

In a telescope Jupiter is still a remarkable 49 or 50 arcseconds wide across its equator, its maximum possible; Jupiter this season is very close to the perihelion of its 12-year orbit around the Sun. See Jupiter's Exceptionally Close Opposition by Bob King.

Jupiter with Great Red Spot on the central meridian, Aug 13, 2022
Jupiter on August 13th, imaged by Christopher Go at 18:32 UT with the Great Red Spot nearly on Jupiter's central meridian (which was at System II longitude 20°). South is up, to match the view in many telescopes. The Red Spot was almost completely surrounded by dark border material of the Red Spot Hollow. Below, the dark North Equatorial Belt was turbulent and chaotic.

Saturn, magnitude +0.5 in dim Capricornus, glows in the south these evenings. It's about four fists to the right of Jupiter at the end of twilight, and lower right of Jupiter as evening grows late. Saturn is highest due south around 9 or 10 p.m.

Saturn imaged by Christopher Go on Aug 26, 2022
Saturn imaged by Christopher Go on August 26th. South is up. Saturn was just two weeks past opposition, but that was enough for the shadow of the globe to start showing on the rings behind it: just off the globe's lower-right limb as seen here. The shadow is wider now. Watch it continue to widen through the fall.

The gray band seen on the globe along the inner edge of the rings is not a belt or a shadow but the semi-transparent C ring.

Uranus, magnitude 5.7 in Aries, is up in the east in good binocular or telescope view by late evening. See the Uranus finder charts in the November Sky & Telescope, page 49.

Neptune, magnitude 7.8 at the Aquarius-Pisces border, is about 10° west of Jupiter. See the Neptune finder charts in the September Sky & Telescope, page 49.


All descriptions that relate to your horizon — including the words up, down, right, and left — are written for the world's mid-northern latitudes. Descriptions and graphics that also depend on longitude (mainly Moon positions) are for North America.

Eastern Daylight Time, EDT, is Universal Time minus 4 hours. (Universal Time is also called UT, UTC, GMT or Z time.)


Want to become a better astronomer? Learn your way around the constellations. They're the key to locating everything fainter and deeper to hunt with binoculars or a telescope.

This is an outdoor nature hobby. For an easy-to-use constellation guide covering the whole evening sky, use the big monthly map in the center of each issue of Sky & Telescope, the essential magazine of astronomy.

Once you get a telescope, to put it to good use you'll need a detailed, large-scale sky atlas (set of charts). The basic standard is the Pocket Sky Atlas (in either the original or Jumbo Edition), which shows stars to magnitude 7.6.

Pocket Sky Atlas cover, Jumbo edition
The Pocket Sky Atlas plots 30,796 stars to magnitude 7.6, and hundreds of telescopic galaxies, star clusters, and nebulae among them. Shown here is the Jumbo Edition, which is in hard covers and enlarged for easier reading outdoors by red flashlight. Sample charts. More about the current editions.

Next up is the larger and deeper Sky Atlas 2000.0, plotting stars to magnitude 8.5; nearly three times as many. The next up, once you know your way around, are the even larger Interstellarum atlas (stars to magnitude 9.5) or Uranometria 2000.0 (stars to magnitude 9.75). And be sure to read How to Use a Star Chart with a Telescope. It applies just as much to charts on your phone or tablet as to charts on paper.

You'll also want a good deep-sky guidebook. A beloved old classic is the three-volume Burnham's Celestial Handbook. An impressive more modern one is the big Night Sky Observer's Guide set (2+ volumes) by Kepple and Sanner.

Can a computerized telescope replace charts? Not for beginners, I don't think, and not on mounts and tripods that are less than top-quality mechanically, meaning heavy and expensive. And as Terence Dickinson and Alan Dyer say in their Backyard Astronomer's Guide, "A full appreciation of the universe cannot come without developing the skills to find things in the sky and understanding how the sky works. This knowledge comes only by spending time under the stars with star maps in hand."


Audio sky tour. Out under the evening sky with your
earbuds in place, listen to Kelly Beatty's monthly
podcast tour of the heavens above. It's free.



"The dangers of not thinking clearly are much greater now than ever before. It's not that there's something new in our way of thinking, it's that credulous and confused thinking can be much more lethal in ways it was never before."
            — Carl Sagan, 1996

"Facts are stubborn things."
             John Adams, 1770


 

Comments


Image of Rod

Rod

October 3, 2022 at 6:05 am

Well, no stargazing for me 🙂 Since 30-Sep, steady light rain in the area from Ian passing, still this morning too. No clear skies until Thursday night or Friday it looks like for me. Perhaps some others are getting out in the early morning or evening and observing some celestial wonders 🙂

You must be logged in to post a comment.

You must be logged in to post a comment.