#because all my free time will be with my family or stargazing (orionids peak on saturday night!) or working

[southislandwren]

i hope i was endearingly pathetic looking when advisor saw me napping in the small conference room, because thats the only way i'm not annoying & cringe in this situation

[astrogeoguy]

The Hunter’s Moon Wades through Water Constellations, Jupiter jumps Mercury, and Uranus Looks its Best!

(Above: Before dawn on Friday, October 19, 2018, Stuart McNair captured this spectacular image of the zodiacal light taken from a site near Lake Simcoe, Ontario. The wedge of light toward the image’s left is the glow of sunlight scattered from interplanetary dust concentrated in the plane of our solar system.)

Astronomy Skylights for this week (from October 21st, 2018) by Chris Vaughan. (Feel free to pass this along to friends and send me your comments, questions, and suggested topics.) I post these with photos at http://astrogeoguy.tumblr.com/ where the old editions are archived. You can also follow me on Twitter as @astrogeoguy! Unless otherwise noted, all times are Eastern Time. Please click this MailChimp link to subscribe to these emails. If you are a teacher or group leader interested joining me on a guided field trip to York University’s Allan I. Carswell Observatory or the David Dunlap Observatory, visit www.astrogeo.ca.

I can bring my Digital Starlab inflatable planetarium to your school or other daytime or evening event, visit DiscoveryPlanetarium.com and request me. We’ll tour the Universe together!

Public Events

Every Monday evening, York University’s Allan I. Carswell Observatory runs an online star party - broadcasting views from four telescopes/cameras, answering viewer questions, and taking requests! Details are here. On Wednesday nights they offer free public viewing through their rooftop telescopes. If it’s cloudy, the astronomers give tours and presentations. Details are here. 

At 7:30 pm on Wednesday evening, October 26 the public are invited to attend the free RASC Toronto Centre Speaker’s Night Meeting at the Ontario Science Centre (Room TBD, just follow the signs). The speaker is Dr. Chris Gainor, author and President of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, presenting History of the Hubble Space Telescope. Details are on the RASC website here. 

On Wednesday, October 24 at 6:30 pm, the Aurora Public Library will present a free lecture by RASC member Ian Wheelband entitled The Milky Way, followed by outside stargazing (weather permitting). Registration and details are here. 

On Thursday evening, October 25 at 7 pm, the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics in Waterloo will present a lecture and webcast from Jocelyn Bell Burnell, winner of the 2018 Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics. Details are here. 

At 8 pm on Friday evening, October 26 the public are invited to attend the free RASC Mississauga Meeting at UTM. The speaker is Dr. Laura Parker, Associate Professor, Dept. of Physics & Astronomy, McMaster University, presenting The Dark Universe. Details are here. 

On Friday, October 26, starting at 7 pm, U of T’s AstroTour will present their planetarium show entitled The Life and Death of Stars. Tickets and details are here. 

If it’s sunny on Saturday morning, October 27 from 10 am to noon, astronomers from the RASC Toronto Centre will be setting up outside the main doors of the Ontario Science Centre for Solar Observing. Come and see the Sun in detail through special equipment designed to view it safely. This is a free event (details here), but parking and admission fees inside the Science Centre will still apply. Check the RASC Toronto Centre website or their Facebook page for the Go or No-Go notification. 

The next RASC Public Event at the David Dunlap Observatory of 2018 will be a Family Night on Saturday, October 27. There will be presentations in the Skylab, a tour of the giant 74” telescope, and viewing through lawn telescopes (weather permitting). The doors will open at 6:30 pm for a 7 pm start. Attendance is by tickets only, available here. If you are a RASC member and wish to help us at DDO in the future, please fill out the volunteer questionnaire here. And to join RASC, visit this page. 

On Saturday, November 10, from 7 to 10 pm, adults aged 19+ can enjoy a social evening of astronomy and music at the David Dunlap Observatory in Richmond Hill. There will be live music by THE CALDERONS, a "WATER WORLDS" talk by Dr. Bhairavi Shankar, tours of the DDO, and stargazing through telescopes (weather dependent). There will be a merchandise table and a photographer on site, a cash bar and refreshments. Tickets and details are here. 

Orionids Meteor Shower

We’ve now entered meteor shower season! Over the next few months, we’ll experience a wave of several showers. The excellent Orionids Meteor Shower, which is derived from material dropped by repeated past passages of Comet Halley, peaked in the hours after midnight (in your local time zone) this morning. At that time, the sky over your head will be plowing forward through the densest region of the particle field, generating up to 25 meteors per hour. The meteors will continue to appear for several more nights. 

(Above: Tunc Tezel of Turkey created this composite image of the Orionids Meteor Shower from a sequence of tripod-mounted camera images. NASA APOD for October 23, 2006)

The meteors can appear anywhere in the sky, but true Orionids will be travelling in a direction away from a location (the radiant) a fist’s diameter to the upper left of the bright red star Betelgeuse in the constellation of Orion. Although not too numerous, Orionids are known for being bright and fast-moving. You can watch for meteors in the evening, too – but many of them will be hidden behind the Earth’s horizon. 

To see the most meteors, find a wide-open dark location, preferably away from light polluted skies, and just look up with your unaided eyes. Binoculars and telescopes are not useful for meteors – their field of view are too narrow. If the peak night is cloudy, several nights on either side will be almost as good. Happy hunting! 

The Moon and Planets

The moon will continue to gleam in the evening sky this week as it transitions through the middle of its monthly cycle. Between tonight and Wednesday, the waxing gibbous moon will pass through the dime water constellations of Aquarius (the Water-bearer), Pisces (the Fishes), and Cetus (the Whale). 

The full moon of October, traditionally called the Hunter's Moon, Blood Moon, or Sanguine Moon, will occur around mid-day on Wednesday. Since it’s opposite the sun at that time, the moon will rise at sunset and set at sunrise. 

When the moon is full, bright ray features may be seen radiating from the most recent craters on the lunar near side. The biggest ray system surrounds the prominent crater Tycho, which is located in the southwestern region of the moon’s face, about where the “Lady in the Moon” would have her pendant. (Note that east and west are reversed on the moon). The bright lines radiating from the crater are reflective crystalline rocks excavated when Tycho was formed. They extend up to 1,500 km from the crater! 

Mare Fecunditatis, Latin for “Sea of Fertility”, is a large dark mare in the eastern equatorial region of the moon, south of the very round Mare Crisium “Sea of Crises”. Near the centre of Mare Fecunditatis sit a pair of small deep craters named Messier. Parallel bright rays extend into the bright lunar highlands rocks to the west. They resemble a comet in binoculars or telescopes. The rays, approximately 120 km long, are consistent with an extremely low angle impact that arrived from the east at 1.7 km/second. That’s more than 6,000 km per hour – five times faster than a rifle bullet!

(Above: The major features on the full moon include dark maria regions and ray systems emanating from recent craters, such as Tycho.)  

After Wednesday, the moon will wane and rise later – lingering for a little while into the morning daytime sky. Overnight on Friday, the waning gibbous moon will approach and then pass through the Hyades star cluster, the stars that form the triangular face of Taurus (the Bull). The moon will enter the cluster at approximately 3 am Eastern Time on Saturday morning. By sunrise in the Eastern time zone, the moon will be in the centre of the triangle. Observers in western North America will be able to see the moon pass less than a finger’s width above Aldebaran, Taurus’ brightest star at about 7 am Pacific Time. This pairing of the bright star and the moon is also an opportunity to look for Aldebaran in daylight using the nearby moon as a guide. 

The moon will end the coming weekend brushing the horns of Taurus, above the bright winter constellation (Oh, no – not Winter!) of Orion (the Hunter). 

Mercury will still be visible this week, but it will be tough to see it from the Northern Hemisphere because it will be barely above the west-southwestern horizon after sunset. The elusive planet will set at about 7 pm local time – 45 minutes after the sun. Because Mercury is on the far side of the sun right now, its appearance in a telescope will be a nearly fully illuminated disk. (For eye safety, be sure to wait until the sun has vanished completely before using binoculars or a telescope on Mercury.) 

For an added bonus, and some help to find Mercury, the bright planet Jupiter will pass near Mercury later this week. Tonight, Jupiter will be less than a fist’s diameter to Mercury’s upper left. On Saturday, October 27, Jupiter will sit only 3.5 finger widths directly above Mercury. The two planets will be slightly closer together on Sunday evening, and then start drawing apart next week. Jupiter will set in the west-southwest before 7:30 pm local time. After this week, we’ll have to wait until next May before the mighty planet will return to the evening sky.

(Above: Mercury will sit below Jupiter in the western evening sky on Sunday, October 27, as shown here at 6:45 pm local time.)  

Reddish Mars and dimmer, yellow-tinted Saturn will remain visible in the southern evening sky this week. As soon as the sky becomes dark enough to reveal them, both planets will be located about two fist diameters above the horizon, with Mars located 35° (three and a half fist diameters) to the left of Saturn. Mars will set in the west at about 1:15 am local time. It’s still well worth looking at, even in a small telescope. Try to see a small white oval near the top of its disk. That’s the southern polar cap (but inverted by your telescope’s optics)! 

Saturn will set before 10 pm local time. Once the sky darkens, even a small telescope should be able to show you some of Saturn’s larger moons, especially its largest satellite, Titan. Using a clock’s dial analogy, Titan will move counter-clockwise over the course of this week – starting from a position at 9 o’clock (to the left of Saturn) tonight, and ending next Sunday at 4 o’clock (to the lower right of Saturn). (Remember that your telescope might flip and/or invert the view. Use the moon to find out how your telescope changes things and keep a note of it, since that will always be the case.) 

(Above: Mars and Saturn remain excellent targets for evening observing this week, as shown here at 7:15 pm local time.)

This autumn presents an ideal time to peruse the ice giant planets Uranus and Neptune because they will be conveniently placed for evening observing and also bigger and brighter than normal because Earth is roughly between them and the sun right now, minimizing our distance from those planets. 

Distant Neptune continues to be visible from evening until about 3 am local time. Using a decent quality telescope you can see the very blue, magnitude 7.8 planet among the dim stars of Aquarius (the Water-bearer) - sitting roughly midway between the modestly bright star Phi (φ) Aquarii and the brighter star Hydor (Lambda Aquarii). Neptune will highest in the sky (and best viewing conditions) at about 10 pm local time. The bright moonlight will make seeing the planet harder this week. 

On Tuesday, the blue-green planet Uranus will reach opposition. At that time, it will be visible all night and at its peak brightness (magnitude 5.7) and size for this year. You can see it without optical aid under very dark skies, but binoculars and telescopes will work better. After mid-evening, Uranus will be high enough in the eastern sky to see it clearly. Uranus is so far from Earth all the time that its appearance at opposition is little better than it is on evenings within a month of opposition. The planet will be 2.8 trillion km from us this week. Its reflected sunlight will require more than 2.5 hours to reach our eyes on Earth! 

(Above: On October 23, the Earth will pass between Uranus and the sun, causing that planet to appear at its brightest and largest for the year. The full moon will all but drown out Uranus.)

Uranus will be located about 3 finger widths to the left (east) of the modestly bright star Torcular (Omega Piscium). That star sits a generous palm’s width above the “V” where the two starry cords of Pisces (the Fishes) meet. The planet will be carried higher in the sky until 1 am local time. 

I’ll post sky charts for the observable planets here. 

Peering at Pegasus

If you missed last week’s information about the constellation of Pegasus (the Winged Horse), I posted it here.

Keep looking up to enjoy the sky! I love getting questions so, if you have any, send me a note.