October 2024 Stargazing Guide
And a waaaay we go. Greetings junior scientists, scientists and citizens of this great big weird wild and wonderful world in which we live. As always I'm your humble science communicator, the great Orbax coming to you from the Department of Physics at the University of Guelph and I'd like to welcome you to our October 2024 Star Gazing Guide.
Spooky season is upon us my friends and as sunrise slides back to 7:56 a.m. by October 31st our sunset will take place at 6:13 p.m. giving us almost 14 hours of Halloween night skies to explore. This month we look towards the planets, bask in the light of a Hunter's Moon and finally learn the difference between a meteor, a comet and an asteroid as all three are upon us this month. All this and more when we take some time... to look up.
This month Venus will be bright and visible in the southwest as the sun sets and by the end of the month will be up for the 90 minutes after sundown. Saturn will have good visibility this month already up in the sky in the southeast after sunset and visible into the early morning while Jupiter will appear low in the East a few hours after sunset but will rise as the night goes on and throughout the month and it's actually best seen in the hours before sunrise.
The full Moon this month is on October 17th and it's actually our third of four Supermoons this Autumn. Settlers of North America will call the October Full Moon the Hunters Moon. Now the Hunters Moon is simply the first Full Moon that takes place after the Harvest Moon so it can occur in October or even November. Around the Great Lakes region, the Anishinaabe call this moon Binaakwe-giizis, the Falling Leaves Moon. The Cree Nation observe the start of bird migration by calling the October moon the Migrating Moon, Pimahamowipisim. The Mi'kmaw of Eastern Canada call the October Full Moon Wikewiku's - the Animal Fattening Moon as many animals get ready for winter hibernation.
So what's the difference between a meteor, a comet and an asteroid?
Well a meteor is a small piece of asteroid or comet that burns up and enters our atmosphere producing a shooting star. Comets and asteroids are both celestial bodies orbiting the Sun but a comet is made of ice and dust and an asteroid is made of metal and rock. The Draconids meteor shower takes place for from October 6th to the 10th and peaks on the night of October 7th as we pass through the debris left by Comet 21P/Giacobini-Zinner. This minor meteor shower, emanating from the constellation Draco the Dragon in the Northwest, should produce up to about 10 meteors an hour. Interestingly the Draconids are best viewed in the early evening as opposed to most meteor showers where the best viewing takes place after midnight. With the moon in a thin waning crescent the skies should be dark enough to catch this one. As the month goes on we'll eventually pass through the tail of Haley's Comet which lights up the sky in the annual Orionids meteor shower taking place from October 2nd to November 7th. This shower appears to emanate from the constellation Orion the Hunter in the East, peaking on the night of October 21st into the morning of the 22nd with up to 20 meters an hour. Unfortunately the waning gibbous Moon will be quite bright that night but perhaps you'll get lucky junior scientists.
In October we may get to see "The Comet of the Century"... or maybe not.
As I mentioned before comets are big ice balls that orbit the Sun and of course as they get close close to the Sun they heat up and eject dust and gas which is what we see as the comet's tail. C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS) will appear in our skies around mid-October when it makes its closest approach to Earth. You're going to be looking towards the western horizon around sunset starting about October 12th until October 20th. As the month goes on it may rise in the sky over the horizon, but it also might not. See the thing about comets is what we've mentioned before... they're ice balls that are basically falling apart in space due to the sun's heat. Some think C/2023 A3 may outshine the Moon and be so bright that you can actually see it during the day. Others think it might be as bright as Venus or Jupiter, but it could also shatter into pieces disappearing from our skies altogether. Only time will tell.
Okay it's asteroid time.
By now you've likely heard that the Earth's picking up a visitor for a couple months. News outlets across the globe were talking about this "Mini-Moon" that'll be orbiting our planet and while it may be a bit of a stretch to think about it in the same way that we think of our Moon, it's still pretty cool.
Asteroids orbit the Sun but as Asteroid 2024 PT5 gets close to Earth it will actually be captured by Earth's gravity for about 2 months, September 29th to November 25th, before it succumbs to the Sun's much larger pull and continues on in its orbit. During that time it will not complete one full orbit of the Earth, unlike our Moon which completes one every 27.3 days, but it will be diverted in its path. Now 2024 PT5 is only about 10 m in diameter and actually won't even be that close to us, 10 times the Earth-Moon distance away. Add these two things together and it means that 2024 PT5 will be too dim to see with an amateur telescope or binoculars. But I think it must get pretty lonely being our Moon and I'm glad it gets a new friend, even if it's just for a couple months.
Well October has proven to be jam-packed with events. Some we can see and some we can't! But that's one of the great things about star gazing, what we can observe is only the smallest fraction of the incredible dance of the cosmos... all of which is waiting there, for you.. and all you need to do is to take some time... and look up.
See you next month junior scientists and don't forget to have a science-tastic day! Special thanks to Royal City Science's own planetary geochemist Dr Glynis Perrett for her help preparing our star gazing guide and the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada.