Today
The planet Saturn is 5 degrees to the moon's lower right this morning. The 75,000-mile-wide Saturn is the sixth planet from the sun and is made up of 74 percent hydrogen, 24 percent helium and small amounts of methane, ethane, and ammonia. The combination of methane, ethane and ammonia cause Saturn to appear a light tan in color. The rings of Saturn are made up of ice and rock chunks and are no more than a few hundred yards thick.
Friday
The Draconid meteor shower peaks tonight. These meteors are debris from comet 21P/Glacobini-Zinner. The meteors will be very slow moving and appear to be coming from the northern horizon so the moon will not interfere with watching them. At its peak you may see about 20 meteors per hour. The moon will be near the Beehive star cluster at about 2 a.m. The Beehive (M44) is the sky's finest open cluster and is easy to see through binoculars even from the city. Under darker skies, away from city lights, the Beehive can be seen with the naked eye.
Saturday
At 8:31 tonight, the star Algol in the constellation Perseus reaches its minimum brightness. Algol is a famous "eclipsing binary star," which means it's actually two stars orbiting each other. Tonight it will reach a magnitude of 3.4 and then will return to its maximum brightness of magnitude 2.1 in the next 2.87 days (2 days, 20 hours and 48 minutes).
Sunday
The moon, Venus and Regulus will form an attractive isosceles triangle this morning. Regulus, the heart of Leo the Lion, is located just 5 degrees to the right and slightly above the moon. The tail of Leo is formed by three stars that form a triangle to the left of Regulus. Using binoculars, look just below the bottom right star that forms the tail and you can see M65 and M66, which are two spiral galaxies.
Monday
The moon is just 8 degrees to the lower left of Venus and 5 degrees above the largest planet, Jupiter. Notice the crescent of the moon lies nearly horizontal; this happens each autumn for the morning crescent and again in the spring for the evening crescent. Since the moon will reach the new moon phase Wednesday, tonight will probably be the last time to see it until Friday.
Tuesday
The Orionid meteor shower will peak Oct. 21. However, you can see some of these meteors now. These meteors come from the debris field of Comet Halley. Every October and May, the Earth passes through this debris field. The meteors will streak across the night sky extremely fast and some will be bright. About half the bright meteors will leave persistent trains or smoke trails. For these meteors you'll want to look to the eastern horizon at about 3 a.m.
Wednesday
The new moon phase occurs at 7:48 p.m. If you were in Hawaii or the western part of Alaska, you would be able to see a partial solar eclipse today. A total lunar eclipse will occur Oct. 28. From our area, when the moon rises it will already be in the total eclipse phase.
Viewing times for International Space Station
Not viewable until Oct. 15.
