In a recent piece, we took a look ahead to a couple of the events that were occurring in October but there were so many things going on that I didn’t get a chance to look at all of them. In the last piece, we took a look at some of Jupiter’s moons occulting each other and having conjunctions with each other and as we did so, we saw the Moon and Mars get very close together.
We will have that Moon-Mars conjunction on the 5th of October. There is also meant to be a conjunction of Mercury and Venus, but it certainly isn’t going to be visible from here in Ireland. We’ll turn around to the sunset in the west. Neither Mercury nor Venus are visible, but if we get rid of the ground, we’ll spot Venus. If we get rid of the atmosphere, we’ll get Mercury. Venus and Mercury are fairly close together in the sky on this date. As we move forward, Mercury comes out to its greatest elongation while Venus moves back in towards the Sun. I’m going to take a look at this from closer to the equator because that will bring Mercury and Venus above the Sun from our perspective, because we will be looking at the ecliptic from a different angle.
We’re going to head down south, but instead of jumping all the way down in a one big leap, we’re going to move down degree by degree. As we go, Venus and Mercury appear to get higher in the sky, but what’s really happening is our perspective is changing. Instead of seeing the ecliptic low in the sky, because it would be pretty much level with the equator, we’re seeing the ecliptic high in the sky, still because it’s pretty much level with the equator. As we pass the equator, it stretches high across the sky. The ecliptic is not exactly in line with our equator. We end up pretty far south in order to get Mercury and Venus at their highest peak above the Sun. That’s partly to do with the seasons. Our perspective on the sky changes with the seasons as well, with the ecliptic looking higher during local summer. We will bring back the atmosphere, and that blocks out Mercury, but even with the ground back Venus is still visible. Moving later, the sky darkens, but Venus and Mercury are still high enough to be seen. They are close together for a few days, but it looks like they are the closest together on the 6th.
We’ll come back to Ireland, our default viewing location, and we’ll move forward to the 11th, which should bring Mars in front of the Beehive Cluster. I mentioned the Beehive Cluster in a recent piece, when we mostly looked forward to see a conjunction of the Moon and Venus in 2031. There were a few other bright objects that were nearby during that conjunction, which I didn’t get a chance to look at that time or this time, but I will in the near future. Moving into morning time, we are looking at Mars and the Beehive Cluster. We’re seeing it here on the 12th, presumably because we’re after midnight. As we move through a little bit of time, Mars noticeably moves in front of these stars. Even over the short period of just the few hours when it’s actually visible to us in a good enough level of darkness for us to take a closer look. I will change the dates a little just to see how much of a difference it makes. On the 11th, Mars is still in front of the Beehive Cluster. It seems that from the 11th to the 12th, it traverses the Beehive Cluster. Especially compared to the dense field of background stars that a cluster presents, it’s very obvious that Mars is moving across the sky, separate to the stars. It is a wanderer, a planet rather than a star.
Even a binoculars presents a great field of view, with many bright, luminous, colorful stars. Using a very big telescope lets us see some detail on Mars, but really it’s too big to give us a good view of what we’re looking at here. We need to zoom out a little bit. Something with lower magnification buta wider field of view shows the great red orange Mars, very clearly red orange, surround by bluer and yellower stars. As we move through time here, Mars moves relative to those stars. Of course, this takes almost an hour, you would need to observe this really over the course of a time lapse, watching it in real time would be a little slow. Thankfully, even a still view looks great. That’s Mars in front of the Beehive Cluster.
Next, we’re going to come back to the 6th. In the recent piece where we looked at Jupiter’s moons getting occulted, we saw the Moon and Jupiter getting very close together, but from a different latitude. From here in Ireland we’ll see the Moon on one side of Jupiter and then the next date on the other side of Jupiter, pretty far on the other side of Jupiter. Thankfully I have been told the location where they occult each other, or at least where they have a very close conjunction. We’re going to 34 degrees 3 minutes and 49 seconds north and 87 degrees, 7 minutes and 32 seconds west. That puts us in North America, in northeastern Alabama. Hopefully this is near enough to some populated locations that many people get to see this happening. We are looking in the east, so we’ll need to move forward for the Moon and Jupiter to rise and they’re definitely very close together in the sky.
Taking a closer look and the Moon does occult Jupiter We’re starting at 2 o’clock in the morning with Jupiter visible just below the Crescent Moon. Moving ahead, first Jupiter’s moons and then Jupiter itself is occulted. Jupiter is just starting to get occulted by the Moon at 2:43. I would say start observing at around 2:40, that will give you a chance to see the moons themselves going behind our Moon, about 2:39 really is when Europa goes behind the Moon, followed by Callisto and Io, followed by Jupiter and then Ganymede. After that, there’s a bit of a wait. The Moon does move around us fairly quickly, but we’re not seeing Europa emerging until just about 3:42. Pretty much an hour later, with Jupiter emerging at, we’ll say 3:50 by the time it’s completely over. That is the Moon occulting Jupiter, visible the whole way through, still in darkness the whole way through. Thanks to Jupiter being so big, we don’t have to worry too much about seeing Jupiter’s moons. We can concentrate on just trying to see Jupiter. This will be easier to observe than the moons of Jupiter occulting each other that we took a look at in the last piece.
With a big telescope, so that we get a really good view of Jupiter’s moons, we can see the stripes on Jupiter as well. With Jupiter in the center, Europa is just at the edge of the field of view. In real time this is happening fairly slowly, you can’t quite see that things are moving, even though on an astronomical time scale they are occurring quite quickly. Speeding things up a little bit, first Europa disappears behind the Crescent Moon, then Callisto and Io, then Jupiter and then Ganymede.Then we have the whole Moon to pass over. The Moon is in a crescent, so it doesn’t take long before we reach the terminator. The surface gets darker as we’re moving on to the nighttime side of the Moon, because the Moon is only a crescent most of the Moon is in darkness. Moving ahead, Jupiter and the moons pop out on the other side. This is a fantastic chance for photographs. The brightness of the Moon is going to make things a little bit tricky, but because it is only a crescent Moon, it’s not going to be as hard as if this had happened with a brighter, fuller, phase.
Looking at the morning sky, we’re just going to pull back and turn around a little bit because the Pleiades are now up nice and high in the morning at this time of year. We’re also going to move forward to the end of the month, when they are next to the Moon. The Moon and the Pleiades end up right next to each other. We’re here on the morning of the 28th, still in North America, so we’ll try moving through a little bit of time and see how they move relative to each other. The Moon is very bright, very close to full, but zooming in just a little bit, the shape of the Pleiades is just about visible.Just as these things are coming up, the Moon moves in front of the Pleiades, and then the Pleiades emerge out the other side. They are harder to see with the brightness of the Moon, without the atmosphere, we can see the Pleiades a bit more clearly. This is happening on the 27th for North America, we haven’t come back to Ireland yet. Back in Ireland, we’re seeing them at 1 o’clock in the morning, so we should actually get a better view of this occurring. Well, maybe not better, but the whole process is visible in darkness, with the Moon occulting some of the Pleiades and then them moving out the other side. Only the top of the cluster is occulted for us, so it probably does look better from a slightly lower latitude. That is occurring at the end of the month.
Those are a couple of the other things that are coming up in October that didn’t quite fit into the overview a few pieces ago, and a few of the locations they will be visible from. I do hope you get a chance to see those things in real life, and I hope you get a chance to see some of the occultations of the Galilean moons as well. You can check out the last piece to learn a bit more about those. You can also like this piece if you enjoyed it and subscribe to this website or my YouTube channel to be notified of the next time I post. Thank you very much for reading, and hopefully I’ll see you back here next time.
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