Skywatch Line for Friday, October 3, through Sunday, October 5, written by Sam Salem
This is Dudley Observatory’s Skywatch Line for Friday, October 3, through Sunday, October 5, written by Sam Salem.
On Friday, Sun rises at 6:55am and sets at 6:33pm; Moon sets at 2:26am and rises at 4:59pm.
On Saturday evening, look for Saturn about a fist to the Moon’s lower left. Find Fomalhaut, the brightest star in the constellation Piscis Austrinus, nearly twice as far to the Moon’s lower right.
On Sunday, the almost full Moon, shines low in the southeast at nightfall. Saturn shines a couple degrees lower right of it. As the night proceeds, watch them draw farther apart. Saturn swings straight down under the Moon.
Saturn, magnitude +0.7, rises before sunset and glows in the east-southeast. Saturn looks brighter than the stars of the Great Square of Pegasus standing on one corner to Saturn’s upper left. Saturn climbs higher through the evening and transits the meridian around midnight.
Venus lies low in the east as Jupiter shines higher in the morning sky. Jupiter rises around midnight and is high in the sky before dawn. Venus rises about a half hour before the very beginning of dawn. Watch for it to come up a little left of due east. After Venus is up and before the sky gets too bright, look for Regulus, increasingly far above it and a bit to the right. Regulus sits 18° above Venus on Saturday morning.
Jupiter, magnitude –2.1 in the constellation Gemini, rises around 1am. Castor and Pollux shine to Jupiter’s upper left. By the beginning of dawn, the three celestial objects stand very high in the east. Spot constellation Orion off to their right. Look for Capella, the brightest star in constellation Auriga the Charioteer, near the zenith.
Mars, magnitude 1.6 in constellation Virgo, is increasingly difficult to spot in the evening twilight. Mars sits very low in the west-northwest as twilight fades. Try to locate it with binoculars about 30 minutes after sunset.
Vega, the brightest star in the constellation of Lyra, shines very high toward the west at night. Vega was the first star, other than the Sun, to have its image photographed. It was one of the first stars whose distance was estimated through parallax measurement. It has functioned as the baseline for calibrating the photometric brightness scale.
Find 2nd-magnitude Eltanin, the nose of Draco the Dragon, up to the right of Vega by little more than a fist at arm’s length. Look for the rest of Draco’s fainter, lozenge-shaped head, a little farther right. Draco’s long arched back and tail loop around the Little Dipper. The main stars of Vega’s own constellation, Lyra, extend from Vega in the direction opposite from Eltanin.