SKY GUIDE: This map represents the night sky as it appears over Maine during October. The stars are shown as they appear at 10:30 p.m. early in the month, at 9:30 p.m. at midmonth, and at 8:30 p.m. at month’s end. Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune are shown at their midmonth positions. To use the map, hold it vertically and turn it so that the direction you are facing is at the bottom. Sky Chart prepared by Seth Lockman
Our famous New England fall foliage will peak later this month. Just as our terrestrial landscape is being transformed, so is our celestial landscape.
Summer constellations like Scorpius and Sagittarius are slowly slipping below the western horizon even as part of the winter hexagon shows up 4 minutes earlier in the east each evening. Look for the Pleiades open star cluster to appear in Taurus along with Capella in Auriga by 9 p.m. beginning this month and by 7 p.m. by the end of October.
The main highlights in October include a partial solar eclipse at new moon on Saturday, Oct. 14, a very partial lunar eclipse two weeks later not visible from southern Maine, Saturn and Jupiter as your bright evening planets with Jupiter nearing its best apparition for the year, the moon passing close to Jupiter twice this month, a return of Comet Encke in the dawn sky, and favorable conditions for the annual Orionid meteor shower on the night of Saturday, Oct. 21.
We will only see about 15% of the sun covered here in southern Maine around noon on Oct. 14. This will not be a total eclipse anywhere because the moon is near apogee, or a little too far away from Earth to completely cover the sun. The result is a spectacular ring of fire left around the sun. About half of all solar eclipses are total and half are annular because of the elliptical orbit of our moon. You will need a safe solar filter to view the sun at all times during this eclipse even if you are right in the path of annularity.
The path of this annular eclipse starts in central Oregon, continues over Nevada, Utah and New Mexico before ending its trek over the United States in Texas. The shadow then continues over the Gulf of Mexico and the Yucatan peninsula through Central America and Panama, finishing over Columbia and Brazil just south of the equator.
Annular eclipses are very interesting and make for great photographs, but they are not even close to delivering all of the drama of a total solar eclipse. The next total solar eclipse in North America will occur on April 8, though it will only be a partial eclipse in southern Maine.
Saturn was at its best at the end of August, so now it rises before sunset and is visible low in the east as soon as it gets dark enough. The soft golden glow of the ringed planet is getting a little fainter and farther away each night even as Jupiter is still getting a little closer and brighter each evening. The King of the Planets shines brightly in Aries the Ram, two constellations to the east of Saturn in Aquarius. Notice that Jupiter is nearly 30 times brighter than Saturn.
Look for a nice conjunction of the nearly full moon just 2 degrees, or 4 times its own width to the left of Jupiter on Sunday, Oct. 1. Then the moon will be 12 degrees farther east the next night, right below the Pleiades open star cluster in Taurus. As a nice bonus, the full moon will once again pass very close to Jupiter on the evening of Saturday, Oct. 28 one hour after sunset looking east. Jupiter will be at its very best for the year on Nov. 3, when it will rise at sunset and not set until sunrise. That is called opposition and happens about every 13 months for Jupiter and Saturn.
Comet Encke, one of our shortest period comets, orbits the sun every 3.3 years. Look for it in central Leo during the first two weeks of this month. It could get as bright at 8th magnitude as it heads into Virgo, but you would still need a telescope to see it.
Halley’s Comet is the only comet that creates two meteor showers for us each year, as we pass right through its long debris trail. One of these is the Orionids, starting on Oct. 21. You can expect about 20 meteors per hour all emanating from the constellation of Orion about 10 degrees northeast of Betelgeuse from a dark sky site during the mornings of Oct. 21-22. Orion and the whole winter hexagon will be up nice and high by 2 a.m. so that more of the meteors will be visible above the horizon. Meteor showers are usually better after midnight because that is when the earth is spinning into the meteors instead of away from them.
Last week, the NASA mission Osiris-Rex landed a capsule in the desert in Utah with the largest asteroid sample ever received on Earth, around 250 grams (about 8 ounces) of material from an asteroid named Bennu. The sample will be opened on Oct. 11 at the Johnson Space Center in Houston and should be fully analyzed by the end of January. Bennu and the thousands of other larger asteroids each hold many more mysteries with their untouched and unknown records of deep time, truly orbiting time capsules just waiting for us to decipher their myriad of secrets.
OCTOBER HIGHLIGHTS
Oct. 1: The moon and Jupiter are just 2 degrees apart in Aries the Ram.
Oct. 2: The moon is right below the Pleiades tonight.
Oct. 4: On this day in 1957 the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the first satellite to orbit the earth, thus beginning the space age and the space race.
Oct. 7: Niels Bohr was born on this day in 1885. He was one of the founders of the quantum revolution that made most of our modern technology possible. The waning crescent moon is in Gemini near Castor and Pollux in the morning sky.
Oct. 8: The moon is near the Beehive open star cluster in Cancer this morning.
Oct. 14: New moon is today at 1:55 p.m. This will create an annular solar eclipse visible from much of the western hemisphere, including 15% here in Maine.
Oct. 21: The Orionid meteor shower peaks.
Oct. 23: The waxing gibbous moon is 5 degrees below Saturn this evening.
Oct. 28: Full moon is at 4:24 p.m. This is known as the Hunters Moon.
Oct. 31: On this day in 2005 the Hubble Space telescope discovered two more moons of Pluto, Nix and Hydra.
Bernie Reim of Wells is co-director of the Astronomical Society of Northern New England.
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