The Evening Sky in October 2024
Venus is the brilliant ‘evening star’ appearing in the west soon after sunset. It sets soon after 10 pm NZDT at the beginning of the month and around 11:20 at the end. It is bright enough to cast shadows in dark locations. The Moon will be near Venus on the 5th and 6th.
Mercury (not on the chart) begins an evening sky appearance late in the month. It appears as a medium-bright star setting in the southwest around 8:40 at the end of October.
The brightest true stars are low in the north and south. Canopus is low in the southeast at dusk, often twinkling colourfully. It swings up into the eastern sky during the night. On the north skyline is Vega, setting in the early evening. Places in the north of Aotearoa NZ will see Deneb near the north skyline in the middle of the Milky Way. Deneb is the brightest star in the cross-shaped constellation of Cygnus the swan. It is one of the most distant stars visible to the naked eye, around 2600 light-years* away. Its brightness is uncertain because of the distance uncertainty but it could be 200 000 times the Sun's luminosity. Saturn appears midway up the northeast sky at dusk and is due north by 11 pm. It looks like a medium brightness star with a cream tint. The star Fomalhaut, above Saturn, marks the Southern Fish, Piscis Austrinus. Below and right of Fomalhaut is Achernar, a little brighter than Saturn. Fomalhaut, Achernar and Canopus make a long line down the sky.
Saturn appears as a ball with a spike through it in low-powered telescopes. The ring is nearly edge-on so appears as a broad line. Larger telescopes show the ring and Saturn's biggest moon, Titan, looking like a star near the planet. Smaller moons are closer in. Saturn is 1330 million km away mid-month. The moon will be close to Saturn on the 14th and 15th.
Orange Antares is midway down the western sky. It marks the body of the Scorpion. The Scorpion's tail loops up the sky, making a back-to-front question mark with Antares being the dot. The curved tail is the 'fish-hook of Maui' in some Māori star lore. Antares will be left of Venus around the 27th. Above and right of the Scorpion's tail is 'the teapot' made by the brightest stars of Sagittarius. It is upside down in our southern hemisphere view.
In the southwest are 'The Pointers ', Beta and Alpha Centauri, making a vertical pair. They point down to Crux the Southern Cross. Alpha Centauri, the top Pointer, is the closest naked eye star at 4.3 light-years away. Beta Centauri is a blue-giant star, very hot and very luminous, hundreds of light-years away.
The Milky Way is brightest and broadest in Scorpius and Sagittarius. In a dark sky it can be traced down to the south. In the north it meets the skyline right of Vega. The Milky Way is our edgewise view of the galaxy, the pancake of billions of stars of which the Sun is just one. The thick hub of the galaxy, 27 000 light-years away, is in Sagittarius. The actual centre, with a black hole four million times the sun's mass, is hidden by dust clouds in space. Its direction is a little outside the Teapot's spout. The dust clouds appear as gaps and slots in the Milky Way. A scan along the Milky Way with binoculars shows many clusters of stars and some glowing clouds of left-over gas. There are many in Scorpius and Sagittarius and in the Carina region below Crux.
The Large and Small Clouds of Magellan, LMC and SMC, look like two misty patches of light in the southeast sky above Canopus. They are easily seen by eye on a dark moonless night. They are galaxies like our Milky Way but much smaller. The LMC is around 160 000 l.y. away; the SMC around 200 000 l.y. away.
On moonless evenings in a dark rural sky the Zodiacal Light is visible in the west. It looks like late twilight: a faint broad column of light enclosing Venus and reaching up toward Antares, fading out at the Milky Way. It is sunlight reflecting off meteoric dust in the plane of the solar system.
Jupiter is the brightest ‘star’ in the morning hours. It rises in the northeast around 1:20 a.m. at the beginning of the month and 11:20 p.m. at the end. It is due north at dawn. It shines with a steady golden light.
*A light-year (l.y.) is the distance that light travels in one year: nearly 10 million million km or 10^13 km. Sunlight takeseight minutes to get here; moonlight about one second. Sunlight reaches Neptune, the outermost major planet, in four hours. It takes four years to reach the nearest star, Alpha Centauri.
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