October Autumn stargazing at its best, with a touch of summer
October is such a wonderful time of year for stargazing over Butler. Nights are longer and offer great constellations, planets and other celestial treasures. Your Sky Guide app is going to get quite a workout.
Treat yourself and lie back on a reclining lawn chair to take it all in. The dark skies of the countryside are best, but even city skies can put on a great show.
There is so much to see in October. The headlining planet is Saturn, which reaches its closest approach to Earth early in the month this year. More properly said, Saturn and Earth, in their individual orbits around the Sun, are making their closest approach to each other.
Astronomically, this is called opposition, which happens every 378 days. On Oct. 4, Saturn is just over 738 million miles away, which, believe it or not, is close for Saturn. Not only is it closest to Earth this year, but Saturn will also be visible nearly all night, rising around sunset and setting around sunrise.
Without a doubt, this is a wonderful time to view Saturn with a telescope, even a smaller one. I recommend waiting at least a couple hours after sunset, so it has a chance to rise above the blurring effects of Earth’s atmosphere near the horizon.
Toward the end of the month, when Saturn is higher above the horizon at sunset, you can direct your scope at it as soon as it’s dark enough.
Even with a small telescope, Saturn’s gorgeous ring system will blow you away. They are more than 150,000 miles in diameter but only about 50 feet thick, on average. This is the best we’ve been able to see the ring system from Earth in several years, because the ring system’s angle relative to the planet is opening up again.
You should also see some of Saturn's moons, resembling tiny stars swarming around Saturn. Titan is Saturn’s largest moon, over 3,200 miles in diameter, with a thick methane atmosphere.
As with any telescope target, take long, continuous views of Saturn so your eye can adjust to the light level and you can see more detail. You may also see Saturn more clearly as you catch thinner patches of Earth’s atmosphere passing by.
Even though it’s autumn, many summer constellations are hanging on in the Western evening sky. You can still easily see the Summer Triangle high above the Western horizon, made up of the three brightest stars from three separate constellations: Vega in the constellation Lyra the Lyre; Altair, the brightest star in Aquila the Eagle; and Deneb in Cygnus the Swan.
The Big Dipper is upright and riding low in the northwestern sky. Although it’s the most famous star pattern in the sky, it’s not an official constellation — it makes up the bright rear end and tail of the large constellation Ursa Major, the Big Bear.
In the east, look for a giant diamond of stars on the rise that marks the torso of the grand constellation Pegasus the winged horse. Just to the upper left of Pegasus is the Andromeda Galaxy, the next-door neighbor to our Milky Way, nearly 2.5 million light-years away, with just 1 light-year spanning nearly 6 trillion miles! Your Sky Guide app will help you find it.
If you stay up late enough, you’ll spot the Pleiades star cluster, resembling a tiny version of the Big Dipper in the eastern sky. It’s also called the “Seven Little Sisters,” the daughters of the god Atlas. Most people can see at least six stars, but it’s possible to see seven, or even more.
Through binoculars or a small telescope, you can see many more. Astronomically, it’s a cluster of young stars that all formed together over 100 million years ago. They’re relatively close — a little over 400 light-years away.
Another wonderful gift October stargazing offers in the darker countryside heavens is the Milky Way band. In the early evening, look for a ribbon of ghostly light that reaches across the entire sky from the southwest to the northeast horizon, cutting the sky nearly in half. It’s absolutely breathtaking.
The Milky Way band is the combined light of billions and billions of stars that make up the plane, or the thickest part, of our own Milky Way galaxy.
Don’t miss the great October skies!
Mike Lynch is an amateur astronomer and professional broadcast meteorologist for WCCO Radio in Minneapolis/St. Paul. He is also the author of “Stars: a Month by Month Tour of the Constellations,” published by Adventure Publications and available at bookstores and at adventurepublications.net. Contact him at mikewlynch@comcast.net.
