It’s the week of ghosts and goblins lurking in the night sky, if you let your imagination go wild.
I want to show you some tricks to find some of the great treats in the late October sky. Find the October star map from the Oct. 4 Skywatch column. If it’s long gone in the recycle bin, you can pull the star map up from my Web site, www.lynchand thestars.com.
The bright star Arcturus
This Halloween star is a bright orange pumpkin color that’s easily seen early in the evening. As soon as it’s dark enough, look for it just above the low west-northwest horizon. Astronomically Arcturus is an orange-red star 37 light-years away, bloating out as it nears the end of its life.
The Andromeda Galaxy
This ghostly image will require binoculars or a small telescope to see unless you’re well away from city lights, and even then it will appear as a tiny faint cloud patch in the eastern evening sky. The Andromeda Galaxy, the next door neighbor to our Milky Way Galaxy, is a mere 2.5 million light-years away. As you see in the diagram, it’s above the constellation Andromeda, which is attached to the great square of the constellation Pegasus, the winged horse.
The Milky Way Band
All of the stars that we see in the night sky are part of our Milky Way Galaxy. If you away from city lights, you’ll see that ghostly band of light running roughly from the northern horizon, through the zenith, onto the southern horizon. This band is made up of the combined light of billions of stars we call our home galaxy.
The Pleiades star cluster
This is my favorite Halloween treat. Anyone can see it no matter how much city light there is. Just look in the low east-northeastern sky a little later in the evening this week, after about 9 p.m., and you’ll spot it as it’s on the rise.
The Pleiades are also called the “Seven Little Sisters Cluster” because, according to Greek mythology, these seven stars represented the seven weeping daughters of the old god Atlas, who was being forced by newer gods like Zeus and others to hold the whole world up on his shoulders. Even though it’s called the Seven Little Sisters there are really only six stars of the cluster you can easily see with the naked eye. With a pair of binoculars or a small telescope you can see many, many more stars.
Astronomically, the Pleiades is a cluster of young stars that formed together about 100,000 years ago and is a little more than 400 light-years from Earth.
The planet Mars
The orange-red, moderately bright starlike object on the rise in the low eastern sky is Mars on its way for another close encounter with Earth early next year. Mars and Earth will approach each other in the next few months as they sling around the sun in their own orbits. Right now, Mars and Earth are separated by a little over 113 million miles, but by late January Mars will be less than 67 million miles away.
The moon and Jupiter
This is a one-night-only special on Monday. Even before it’s totally dark, look for the waxing gibbous, football-shaped moon right next to the bright planet Jupiter in the southeastern sky. They’re separated by only 3 degrees right now.
With a small telescope or even a pair of binoculars, you can easily make out the disk of the largest planet in our solar system, and maybe even a few of its horizontal cloud bands of methane, sulfur and ammonia. You should be able to see some of Jupiter’s brighter Galilean moons that resemble tiny stars in a line on either side of the big planet.
On Monday evening, Jupiter will be just under 437 million miles away.
Mike Lynch is an amateur astronomer and professional broadcast meteorologist for WCCO Radio in Minneapolis.
and is author of the book, “Washington Starwatch,” available at bookstores and at his Web site, www.lynchandthestars.com.
The Everett Astronomical Society welcomes new members. Go to www.everettastro.org.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
