SKYLIGHTS
Astronomy news for the week starting Friday, October 5, 2001.
The Moon descends in phase and brightness toward its third quarter,
the phase reached the night of Tuesday, October 9 shortly before
Moonrise in the Americas. The Moon will thence begin its waning
crescent phase as it moves through Cancer and then into Leo. In
the early part of the week the Moon will make a fine passage
between the giant planets Saturn and Jupiter. The night of
Saturday the 6th, the Moon will approach Saturn. The next two
nights, Sunday the 7th and Monday the 8th, it will be between the
pair, and then before moonrise the night of Tuesday the 9th will
pass north of Jupiter, appearing to the east of the planet upon its
rising.
Mars hangs low in the southwestern sky, where it will be for the
rest of the year as (while trying to keep up with faster Earth) it
travels easterly along the ecliptic from its current low position
within the constellation Sagittarius. As it moves, it will
noticeably dim as the Earth pulls away from it. Our evening
attention now is slowly being displaced from Mars to Saturn, which
is now rising around 9:30 PM Daylight Time, and then to Jupiter,
which this week rises as Mars sets, around 11:30 PM. These two
great planets are then high in the sky near dawn when brilliant
Venus hovers over the eastern horizon.
Early October evenings, especially those with no Moonlight, provide
a fine time to view the remaining summer stars, the Summer Triangle
of Vega, Deneb, and Altair high in the sky, the northern two of the
stars nearly overhead in mid-latitudes. As the Big Dipper falls in
the northwest, The "W" of Cassiopeia rises in the northeast,
followed by Perseus and bright Capella in Auriga. From out of
Perseus flows the Milky Way through Cassiopeia and then through dim
Cepheus and into Cygnus, from which it falls through Aquila and
down to Sagittarius past Mars.
As the evening progresses, watch for the passage of the lonely
first magnitude star Fomalhaut, which in mid-northern latitudes
appears to glide slowly across the far southern sky, the star the
luminary of Piscis Austrinus, the "Southern Fish." Both Fomalhaut
and high brilliant Vega are surrounded by dusty disks of matter
that may hold some kind of planetary system, though no planets have
ever actually been detected. To the northwest of Fomalhaut is
rather dim Capricornus, the Zodiac's "water goat," while to the
northeast lies Aquarius, the "water bearer" and then farther to the
northeast Pisces, the classic "fishes." The whole area represents
a "wet quarter" of the sky that once signalled a rainy season in
some ancient land.
