![]() Friday, October 14 - Waning Moon near Mars (overnight)ĭuring autumn at mid-northern latitudes every year, the ecliptic (green line) extends nearly vertically upward from the eastern horizon before dawn. Use Starry Night to look up your timing for the event. ![]() The rest of North America will only see the moon pass closely above (north) Uranus. Around 06:00 GMT, telescope-owners in the northwestern USA, Alaska, northern and western Canada, and Greenland can see the moon occult Uranus - the tenth in a series of consecutive lunar occultations of that planet. Since the moon's orbital motion (green line) will be carrying it steadily eastward, observers looking later, and in the more westerly time zones, will see the moon progressively closer to Uranus. When the pair clears the eastern rooftops in the Atlantic and Eastern Time Zones, the moon will be positioned several degrees from the planet. On Tuesday evening, October 11 in the Americas, the very bright, waning gibbous moon will shine a short distance to the upper right (or celestial west) of the blue-green, magnitude 5.7 speck of Uranus. Saturday, October 8 - Moon Pursues Jupiter (all night) Use high magnification to look around Copernicus for small craters with bright floors and black haloes - impacts through Copernicus' white ejecta that excavated dark Oceanus Procellarum basalt and even deeper highlands anorthosite. Around the full moon, Copernicus' ray system, extending 500 miles (800 km) in all directions, becomes prominent. Several nights before the moon reaches its full phase, Copernicus exhibits heavily terraced edges (due to slumping), an extensive ejecta blanket outside the crater rim, a complex central peak, and both smooth and rough terrain on the crater's floor. This 800 million-year-old impact scar is visible with unaided eyes and binoculars - but telescope views will reveal many more interesting aspects of lunar geology. The nights surrounding Friday, October 7 will be particularly good for viewing the prominent crater Copernicus, which is located in eastern Oceanus Procellarum, the dark region located due south of Mare Imbrium and slightly northwest of the moon's center. Sunday, October 2- First Quarter Moon (at 8:14 p.m. ![]() Despite swimming close to the Milky Way, Delphinus' only prominent deep-sky objects are two globular clusters designated NGC 7006 and NGC 6934, which are also numbers C42 and C47, respectively, on Sir Patrick Moore's Caldwell List. Gamma Delphinus, the star marking the dolphin's nose, is a close-together double star with one component a greenish color. Those funny appellations are actually the name of 19th-century astronomer Nicolaus Venator spelled backward. Delphinus' brightest two stars are bluish Sualocin, at the top of its head, and whitish Rotanev, at the nape of its neck. Look for its five 4th-magnitude stars shining just to the lower left (or celestial southeast) of the line connecting the bright stars Deneb and Altair.Īccording to Greek legend, Poseidon, god of the seas, was assisted in a matter of the heart by a friendly dolphin, so he rewarded it with a place of honor in the heavens. (Image credit: Starry Night Software) (opens in new tab)ĭuring the evening in early October, the small constellation of Delphinus is positioned high in the southern sky.
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