Today we are taking a look ahead to the month of October. October has quite a few events, we have the opposition of Saturn and a close conjunction between Mars and the Moon, as well as the Draconid meteor shower and much more. We might not have the equinox this month, we might not have an eclipse this month, but there still is more going on in October than there was in September.
Starting on the 5th of October, just past midnight at about 1:21. That means that we’re really at just 21 minutes past midnight, which would be our local midnight. Here in Ireland, because we are still using summertime, we’re an hour ahead of UTC. Technically the 4th is when Saturn should be at opposition, but it looks like it’s a little closer to south here on the 5th, just past midnight, so still very close to the 4th. There is a chance that Saturn’s opposition happened at a given time UTC that is closer to our date of the 5th. Taking a closer look, several of Saturn’s moons are visible, and we know that Saturn’s rings are quite nice at the moment. Not as nice as they’ll be next year, but nicer than they were for the opposition last year, because Saturn’s tilt is still changing. We’re seeing a distance here of 1261.743 million kilometers and that is the distance from us, which is what we’re concerned about.
Checking the days either side, and that number only goes up. So it looks like here on the 5th, just after 1 o’clock, that is when we’re going to see it at its closest, when it’s at its highest in the sky, and that is as close to the opposition as we need to be. As we have done several times in recent pieces, we’re going to take a look at Saturn with telescopes and binoculars. With a very large pair of binoculars, Titan is just about visible, but really when it comes to Saturn and any of these planets, you do want to be using something a little bit bigger. Using a big telescope, several of Saturn’s moons are visible, and just barely so are the rings. Saturn’s rings are a little bit tougher to see at the moment, partly because Saturn is at opposition and it’s so bright, the brightness of Saturn can make it a little bit harder to pick out its rings. Saturn is up there, even if its rings may be difficult to see, if only due to the brightness of Saturn. We will pull back from Saturn and we will move forward to morning time so we can catch the conjunction of the Moon and Mars.
By the time Jupiter is rising, at about 2:50 in the morning, the Moon and Mars are already up. It is around this time that they would be getting high enough to be seen above trees and buildings. We can see here that they get closer together and they’re pretty much at their closest at just about 6:25 when the sky is starting to get bright. Thankfully, the Moon and Mars are pretty far away from the glow of the rising Sun, so we do have plenty of time to observe them. Zooming in a little bit, they are a bit further away from each other than, for example, Venus and the Moon will be in 2031, which we looked at in a recent piece. We can’t really see much detail on Mars while keeping the Moon in view, but of course the Moon is very big and very bright, so it will dominate your view unless you have a very powerful telescope. Zooming in on Mars, it is leaving northern winter. There is still a lot of ice there on the north pole, but the south pole is what’s currently facing away from us. It looks like, on this date, we’ve got a fantastic view of some of Mars’ most impressive features with Olympus Mons on one side, the three other Tharsis region volcanoes and then the Valles Marineris or the Mariner Valley, the giant canyon on Mars. This is a fantastic day to look at Mars and if you were observing Mars while it passed by the Moon, you would get to see it rotate.
We will keep moving forward to the 7th and back into the early evening. We’re after midnight, so we will have to move forward a day again to bring us back into the 7th, and we’re going to turn around to the north. Of course the north is full of famous constellations, we have the Plough or the Big Dipper which is part of the constellation Ursa Major. Then we have the North Star part of Ursa Minor, and stretching along their side, opposite Cassiopeia, is the constellation of Draco. Draco the Dragon, stretches along the side of the Little Dipper and above the tail of the Big Dipper.
This is where the radiant of the Draconids will be, and the Draconids are peaking on the 9th of October according to Stellarium. The 7th is the date that I saw elsewhere, but sometimes this does change. These meteor showers with ranges of activity, the Draconids range from the 5th to the 10th, with things like leap years and subtle changes in the stream of material, the date of the actual peak can vary. A lot of the time it is due to leap years and the variation is purely man made, but sometimes it can happen for other reasons as well. The Draconids have a huge variation, 20 to 700. The upper numbers are very rare, we don’t usually get them, but our current hourly rate is a high as 15 to 500, which is pretty close compared to the maximum hourly rate. Even though we’re looking at them early in the evening, and we can see that number actually goes up as we get closer to sunset, moving back in time. The Draconids are one of the meteor showers that looks better just after the Sun goes down. As we move later in the evening, not only does the amount of meteors go down, but it’s getting lower in the sky and that’s going to make whatever meteors it is producing harder to see. Just as the Sun is setting, we’re getting a local hourly rate of 6 to 200, but again that higher number of 200 is unlikely. We’re probably going to get closer to 10 to 20 or so from the Draconids, but we will talk more about that meteor shower later when we get a little bit more into October.
The New Moon is falling on the 10th, but of course we won’t see it. Our Full Moon is on the 25th, it will be at 99.7% just as the Moon comes up and as we get later it gets up to 99.8%, as we move into the 26th. We’re still seeing the Moon nice and high in the sky, or I should say, we’re back to seeing the Moon nice and high in the sky. The Moon was quite low in the sky during midnight in June and July, I’m sure some of you will remember. If not, you can go back and check out the articles posted for those months. Now we are seeing the Moon nice and high as we come into wintertime and of course looking at this Full Moon in October, this is a month after the autumnal equinox, so we’re definitely getting back into winter time.
We have moved the whole way through to the end of the month, so we’re going to have to come back to the 12th which is Mercury’s greatest eastern elongation. It is east of the Sun, which means we would see it in the west, and I say would because the angle of the ecliptic makes it very difficult to see Mercury from Ireland. Even when the Sun is just under the horizon, Mercury is just barely under the horizon as well. If we move forward to bring Mercury above the horizon, the Sun is practically above the horizon, and with the atmospheric distortion it is. The light of the Sun is just too bright for us to see Mercury, and by the time the sky is dark enough, Mercury is well below our horizon. Even though it is at its greatest elongation, for those of us here in the north, and for people in the far south as well, Mercury is a very difficult planet to see, even when it’s at its furthest from the Sun. Of course I did still want to mention it for anyone closer to the equator.
Moving forward again towards the end of the month, and we do have another meteor shower peaking closer to morning time because it’s radiant is rising closer to morning time. We have the Orionids. They are peaking on the 21st, but I think they’re probably peaking closer to midnight if we’re seeing a higher zenith hourly rate on the morning of the 22nd. By the time Orion is high in the sky, we’re only getting 18 out of 20 and, and our local hourly rate is just 5 in the city. There are other meteor showers running, but except of course for the antihelion which is always running, they peak at different times of the year. A few do peak at the end of October, but they are very minor meteor showers, so they won’t contribute too much. The Eta Geminids for example are one minor shower, but we will look at the other meteor showers more when we take a further look at the Draconids. That brings us through to the end with the Full Moon coming back up on the 25th, up to 99.9% at 2 o’clock in the morning of the 26th.
That brings us through the coming month of October. As I’m sure you’ve noticed, there’s a lot and we will review all of these events as we get closer to them over the course of the month. I hope you get a chance to see them in real life, but if you don’t, don’t worry, I will show you here. I hope that you enjoyed this piece. If you did, please do like it. If you like this kind of content, then please subscribe to this website and my YouTube channel. Thank you very much for reading and hopefully I’ll see you back here next time.
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