October Night Sky

Sky events for this month & objects for observation can be found here.

Courtesy of Orion Telescopes & Binoculars

Click to enlarge. A larger printable version of this chart can also be found here.
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​PLANETS FOR OCTOBER

In the chart above for mid-month, the colored arrows show the motion of each planet and the Sun during the month. The Moon is plotted for the evening dates in the Americas when it's waxing (right side Illuminated) or full, and for the morning dates when it's waning (left side illuminated). Sky & Telescope.
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SATURN AND JUPITER

Jupiter and Saturn remain bright fixtures in the southern sky. As the pair rise about four minutes earlier each evening, they’re easy to spot just after sunset. Jupiter, nearly 15 times brighter than Saturn, and four of its largest moons (the planet hosts 79 in total) can be seen using only a pair of binoculars. To spot Saturn’s colorful rings, it’s recommended that you use a telescope with an aperture of at least 50mm and modest power (25x).

Using a telescope one can easily observe Jupiter's cloud belts and moons, and Saturn displays its magnificent ring system - truly one of the most beautiful things you can see in a telescope.

Graphics - Sky & Telescope

HALLOWEEN – short for All Hallows’ Eve – is an astronomical holiday. Sure, it’s the modern-day descendant from Samhain, a sacred festival of the ancient Celts and Druids in the British Isles. But it’s also a cross-quarter day, which is probably why Samhain occurred when it did. Early people were keen observers of the sky. A cross-quarter day is a day more or less midway between an equinox (when the sun sets due west) and a solstice (when the sun sets at its most northern or southern point on the horizon). Halloween – October 31 – is approximately the midway point between the autumn equinox and winter solstice, for us in the Northern Hemisphere.

In other words, in traditional astronomy, there are eight major seasonal subdivisions of every year. They include the March and September equinoxes, the June and December solstices, and the intervening four cross-quarter days.
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In modern times, the four cross-quarter days are often called Groundhog Day (February 2), May Day (May 1), Lammas (August 1) and Halloween (October 31).

Bruce McClure - Earth and Sky

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