SKY GUIDE: This chart represents the sky as it appears over Maine during October. The stars are shown as they appear at 10:30 p.m. early in the month, at 9:30 p.m. at midmonth and at 8:30 p.m. at month’s end. Mars, Saturn and Jupiter are shown in their midmonth positions. To use the map, hold it vertically and turn it so that the direction you are facing is at the bottom. Sky chart prepared by George Ayers
October is when famous flaming foliage peaks for us in New England each year. Just as autumn is now transforming our landscape and cooling our air, the sky above is also changing as fall and winter constellations are rotating into view to set the stage for a new season.
This month brings with it more than the usual share of interesting highlights. The bonus this particular October will be Mars at its most dazzling in 17 years. Then you have Jupiter and Saturn getting a little closer each night, Uranus at opposition in Aries, two full moons including a blue moon on Halloween, an asteroid named Flora at opposition, the usual close conjunctions of the moon with some of the planets, a very close conjunction of Venus and Regulus, and favorable conditions for not one, but two meteor showers – the Draconids on the Oct. 8 and the Orionids on Oct. 21.
Mars will be the magnificent star on our celestial stage for all of this month. It doubled in brightness last month as the earth was rapidly catching up with the red planet in our respective orbits, and now that we have caught it, it will even outshine Jupiter. Mars will be closest to Earth on the Oct. 6 and it will reach opposition on Oct. 13, when it will rise at sunset and not set until sunrise. This only happens once every 26 months, based on how we both orbit the sun, but some of these oppositions can be much better than others. This will be one of the best. Although not as close as the last one in July of 2018, which was a perihelic opposition, meaning that its perihelion or closest approach to the sun coincided with its closest approach to Earth, this one will be fully 30 degrees higher above our horizon, allowing for much better views of our neighboring and still mysterious planet.
Mars will be 39 million miles away at this opposition. To put that into a good comparison scale to picture it and not just think of a number, that is the equivalent of about 5,000 earth diameters. The earth is 8,000 miles in diameter and 25,000 miles in circumference. The sun is nearly 12,000 earth diameters away on the average. The moon is just 30 earth-diameters away. Mars will even outshine Jupiter for a while this month and its apparent diameter will reach 22 arc seconds of the sky, or nearly half a minute. 30 arc minutes is half a degree, which is the size of the full moon and the sun.
The last good opposition before the July 2018 perihelic opposition was on Aug. 27, 2003. That was the closest approach of Mars in nearly 60,000 years, about the time modern humans started migrating east out of Africa. Mars was only 35 million miles away then, but a long-standing rumor started circulating on the web then that Mars would become as large as the full moon in our sky. Mars, which is half the size of the earth, would have had to get within just 83 earth diameters instead of the actual 5,000 earth diameters. That is about 60 times closer than it actually got. It might have been an honest mistake if they just mixed up arc seconds and arc minutes, which is a factor of 60. In any case, it is a good exercise in understanding relative size and scale of some of our nearby neighbors in our solar system.
You will still need a telescope to enjoy all the features now visible on Mars during this great opposition. Look for dark markings and both the north and south polar icecaps. The south polar cap is mostly frozen carbon dioxide, or dry ice. It is summer at the South Pole now, so it will be smaller than usual. I already saw some of these markings through several telescopes at our club’s last event a few weeks ago. Not many of us showed up, but it was good to see everyone again “live” outside and with masks on. We also enjoyed great views of Jupiter and Saturn and many popular favorite celestial objects like the Andromeda Galaxy and the great globular cluster in Hercules along with several nice planetary nebulae, which is a look into the distant future of what our own sun will turn into when it finally runs out of fuel in about 5 billion years.
You may even see the faint outline of Olympus Mons, the biggest volcano in the entire solar system, fully three times the height of Mt. Everest at 90,000 feet or 17 miles high. The whole mound covers the size of France. Then you may also see one or both of the small Martian moons, Phobos and Deimos, which means Fear and Terror. Phobos is slightly larger and brighter, but it is very close to the planet at only 3,700 miles, so it is hard to see over the glare of Mars. Phobos is about 14 miles in diameter and Deimos is only 8 miles across. Deimos is much farther away from Mars, so it is easier to see. Based on what we know about gravity and orbital mechanics, Phobos is getting a little closer to Mars each year and in about 50 million years it will either crash into Mars or be torn up by its gravity into a ring of rubble.
While you are enjoying this close opposition of Mars, be aware that three different countries have recently successfully launched a whole armada of scientific exploratory missions. NASA has the Perseverance Rover with a drone that will fly in the very thin Martian atmosphere, the United Arab Emirates have HOPE, which will just orbit Mars and not land, then China has Tianwen 1, which means “questions to heaven.” That is the heaviest payload ever launched to Mars and contains an orbiter, a lander and a rover. So humans will have invaded Mars remotely by late winter of 2021, instead of the Martians invading us. The result will be a lot of great scientific data and a much deeper understanding of this planet which will better prepare us for sending humans there safely in just 15 more years.
So dust off your telescopes or borrow one from a library or a friend or an astronomy club and enjoy this rare showing of Mars. The next time it will be this close and high in our sky will be in 2035, just about the time NASA has scheduled the first humans to land on Mars.
Both Jupiter and Saturn are now back to their direct or eastward motion. They are both easily visible high in the south as soon as it gets dark enough, before any other stars become visible. Watch how the closer and faster-moving Jupiter is catching up with Saturn. That will culminate on the winter solstice, when they will be just a quarter of a degree apart, their closest conjunction in about 400 years, since the invention of the telescope and modern science began.
The planet Uranus will reach opposition in Aries on Halloween. It will reach a magnitude of 5.7, so it should even be visible without binoculars. It will cover just 3.8 arc seconds of the sky, or 6 times smaller than Mars. It is tilted 97.8 degrees on it axis, so it appears to be rolling along the ecliptic. It exhibits a lovely pale blue color in a telescope.
Venus will pass within half a degree of Regulus in Leo on Oct. 2. That is the width of the full moon. I could see the star Regulus in the daytime very close to the sun along with several planets that instantly popped into view when it was completely covered by the moon during the total solar eclipse on Aug. 21, 2017. I drove all the way to eastern Idaho to see that and it was well worth every second of my trip. Everyone should see a total solar eclipse at least once in their lifetimes. You will learn more about the sun, moon, and planets and the inner workings of our solar system during those few brief moments of being immersed in the moon’s shadow than you ever could by just studying math and physics or watching movies of eclipses.
The Orionid meteor shower will peak on Wednesday, Oct. 21 at around 2 a.m. The conditions are favorable this year with no moonlight to see 15 meteors per hour from a dark sky site. These are tiny, sand grain-sized pieces of Halley’s Comet disintegrating high in our atmosphere at 148,000 mph, or twice the speed that the earth is always orbiting the sun.
The radiant of this shower is in the club of Orion. So you could picture Orion the mighty hunter hurling these meteors at the earth or batting them towards us with his club. Halley’s Comet also causes the Eta Aquarids on May 5 each year. The entire comet will not return again until 2062.
Oct.1: The full moon is at 5:06 p.m. This is also called the famous Harvest Moon because it is closer to the equinox than last month’s full moon was. The Yerkes 40 inch refracting telescope was dedicated on this day in 1897. Designed by George Ellery Hale, it was the largest telescope in the world at the time and is still the largest refractor in the world even now.
Oct. 2: Mars will rise with the moon tonight right after sunset. Venus will pass within half a degree of Regulus this morning.
Oct. 4: On this day in 1957, Sputnik 1 was launched by the Russians.
Oct. 8: The Draconid meteor shower peaks tonight.
Oct. 9: The last quarter moon is at 8:41 p.m.
Oct. 13: Mars is at opposition.
Oct. 14: Venus rises close to the waning crescent moon this morning around 4 a.m.
Oct. 16: The new moon is at 3:32 p.m.
Oct. 21: The Orionid meteor shower peaks at 2 a.m.
Oct. 23: The first quarter moon is at 9:24 a.m.
Oct 31: On this date in 2005, the Hubble Space Telescope discovered two more moons of Pluto, Nix and Hydra. The second full moon of this month, also called a Blue Moon, happens at 10:50 a.m.
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TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — A rare Bronze-Era jar accidentally smashed by a 4-year-old visiting a museum was back on display Wednesday after restoration experts were able to carefully piece the artifact back together.
Last month, a family from northern Israel was visiting the museum when their youngest son tipped over the jar, which smashed into pieces.
Alex Geller, the boy’s father, said his son — the youngest of three — is exceptionally curious, and that the moment he heard the crash, “please let that not be my child” was the first thought that raced through his head.
The jar has been on display at the Hecht Museum in Haifa for 35 years. It was one of the only containers of its size and from that period still complete when it was discovered.
The Bronze Age jar is one of many artifacts exhibited out in the open, part of the Hecht Museum’s vision of letting visitors explore history without glass barriers, said Inbal Rivlin, the director of the museum, which is associated with Haifa University in northern Israel.
It was likely used to hold wine or oil, and dates back to between 2200 and 1500 B.C.
Rivlin and the museum decided to turn the moment, which captured international attention, into a teaching moment, inviting the Geller family back for a special visit and hands-on activity to illustrate the restoration process.
Rivlin added that the incident provided a welcome distraction from the ongoing war in Gaza. “Well, he’s just a kid. So I think that somehow it touches the heart of the people in Israel and around the world,“ said Rivlin.
Roee Shafir, a restoration expert at the museum, said the repairs would be fairly simple, as the pieces were from a single, complete jar. Archaeologists often face the more daunting task of sifting through piles of shards from multiple objects and trying to piece them together.
Experts used 3D technology, hi-resolution videos, and special glue to painstakingly reconstruct the large jar.
Less than two weeks after it broke, the jar went back on display at the museum. The gluing process left small hairline cracks, and a few pieces are missing, but the jar’s impressive size remains.
The only noticeable difference in the exhibit was a new sign reading “please don’t touch.”
VICTORIA – The British Columbia government is partnering with a bear welfare group to reduce the number of bears being euthanized in the province.
Nicholas Scapillati, executive director of Grizzly Bear Foundation, said Monday that it comes after months-long discussions with the province on how to protect bears, with the goal to give the animals a “better and second chance at life in the wild.”
Scapillati said what’s exciting about the project is that the government is open to working with outside experts and the public.
“So, they’ll be working through Indigenous knowledge and scientific understanding, bringing in the latest techniques and training expertise from leading experts,” he said in an interview.
B.C. government data show conservation officers destroyed 603 black bears and 23 grizzly bears in 2023, while 154 black bears were killed by officers in the first six months of this year.
Scapillati said the group will publish a report with recommendations by next spring, while an independent oversight committee will be set up to review all bear encounters with conservation officers to provide advice to the government.
Environment Minister George Heyman said in a statement that they are looking for new ways to ensure conservation officers “have the trust of the communities they serve,” and the panel will make recommendations to enhance officer training and improve policies.
Lesley Fox, with the wildlife protection group The Fur-Bearers, said they’ve been calling for such a committee for decades.
“This move demonstrates the government is listening,” said Fox. “I suspect, because of the impending election, their listening skills are potentially a little sharper than they normally are.”
Fox said the partnership came from “a place of long frustration” as provincial conservation officers kill more than 500 black bears every year on average, and the public is “no longer tolerating this kind of approach.”
“I think that the conservation officer service and the B.C. government are aware they need to change, and certainly the public has been asking for it,” said Fox.
Fox said there’s a lot of optimism about the new partnership, but, as with any government, there will likely be a lot of red tape to get through.
“I think speed is going to be important, whether or not the committee has the ability to make change and make change relatively quickly without having to study an issue to death, ” said Fox.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 9, 2024.
The European Space Agency is fast-tracking a new mission called Ramses, which will fly to near-Earth asteroid 99942 Apophis and join the space rock in 2029 when it comes very close to our planet — closer even than the region where geosynchronous satellites sit.
Ramses is short for Rapid Apophis Mission for Space Safety and, as its name suggests, is the next phase in humanity’s efforts to learn more about near-Earth asteroids (NEOs) and how we might deflect them should one ever be discovered on a collision course with planet Earth.
In order to launch in time to rendezvous with Apophis in February 2029, scientists at the European Space Agency have been given permission to start planning Ramses even before the multinational space agency officially adopts the mission. The sanctioning and appropriation of funding for the Ramses mission will hopefully take place at ESA’s Ministerial Council meeting (involving representatives from each of ESA’s member states) in November of 2025. To arrive at Apophis in February 2029, launch would have to take place in April 2028, the agency says.
This is a big deal because large asteroids don’t come this close to Earth very often. It is thus scientifically precious that, on April 13, 2029, Apophis will pass within 19,794 miles (31,860 kilometers) of Earth. For comparison, geosynchronous orbit is 22,236 miles (35,786 km) above Earth’s surface. Such close fly-bys by asteroids hundreds of meters across (Apophis is about 1,230 feet, or 375 meters, across) only occur on average once every 5,000 to 10,000 years. Miss this one, and we’ve got a long time to wait for the next.
When Apophis was discovered in 2004, it was for a short time the most dangerous asteroid known, being classified as having the potential to impact with Earth possibly in 2029, 2036, or 2068. Should an asteroid of its size strike Earth, it could gouge out a crater several kilometers across and devastate a country with shock waves, flash heating and earth tremors. If it crashed down in the ocean, it could send a towering tsunami to devastate coastlines in multiple countries.
Over time, as our knowledge of Apophis’ orbit became more refined, however, the risk of impact greatly went down. Radar observations of the asteroid in March of 2021 reduced the uncertainty in Apophis’ orbit from hundreds of kilometers to just a few kilometers, finally removing any lingering worries about an impact — at least for the next 100 years. (Beyond 100 years, asteroid orbits can become too unpredictable to plot with any accuracy, but there’s currently no suggestion that an impact will occur after 100 years.) So, Earth is expected to be perfectly safe in 2029 when Apophis comes through. Still, scientists want to see how Apophis responds by coming so close to Earth and entering our planet’s gravitational field.
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“There is still so much we have yet to learn about asteroids but, until now, we have had to travel deep into the solar system to study them and perform experiments ourselves to interact with their surface,” said Patrick Michel, who is the Director of Research at CNRS at Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur in Nice, France, in a statement. “Nature is bringing one to us and conducting the experiment itself. All we need to do is watch as Apophis is stretched and squeezed by strong tidal forces that may trigger landslides and other disturbances and reveal new material from beneath the surface.”
The Goldstone radar’s imagery of asteroid 99942 Apophis as it made its closest approach to Earth, in March 2021. (Image credit: NASA/JPL–Caltech/NSF/AUI/GBO)
By arriving at Apophis before the asteroid’s close encounter with Earth, and sticking with it throughout the flyby and beyond, Ramses will be in prime position to conduct before-and-after surveys to see how Apophis reacts to Earth. By looking for disturbances Earth’s gravitational tidal forces trigger on the asteroid’s surface, Ramses will be able to learn about Apophis’ internal structure, density, porosity and composition, all of which are characteristics that we would need to first understand before considering how best to deflect a similar asteroid were one ever found to be on a collision course with our world.
Besides assisting in protecting Earth, learning about Apophis will give scientists further insights into how similar asteroids formed in the early solar system, and, in the process, how planets (including Earth) formed out of the same material.
One way we already know Earth will affect Apophis is by changing its orbit. Currently, Apophis is categorized as an Aten-type asteroid, which is what we call the class of near-Earth objects that have a shorter orbit around the sun than Earth does. Apophis currently gets as far as 0.92 astronomical units (137.6 million km, or 85.5 million miles) from the sun. However, our planet will give Apophis a gravitational nudge that will enlarge its orbit to 1.1 astronomical units (164.6 million km, or 102 million miles), such that its orbital period becomes longer than Earth’s.
It will then be classed as an Apollo-type asteroid.
Ramses won’t be alone in tracking Apophis. NASA has repurposed their OSIRIS-REx mission, which returned a sample from another near-Earth asteroid, 101955 Bennu, in 2023. However, the spacecraft, renamed OSIRIS-APEX (Apophis Explorer), won’t arrive at the asteroid until April 23, 2029, ten days after the close encounter with Earth. OSIRIS-APEX will initially perform a flyby of Apophis at a distance of about 2,500 miles (4,000 km) from the object, then return in June that year to settle into orbit around Apophis for an 18-month mission.
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Furthermore, the European Space Agency still plans on launching its Hera spacecraft in October 2024 to follow-up on the DART mission to the double asteroid Didymos and Dimorphos. DART impacted the latter in a test of kinetic impactor capabilities for potentially changing a hazardous asteroid’s orbit around our planet. Hera will survey the binary asteroid system and observe the crater made by DART’s sacrifice to gain a better understanding of Dimorphos’ structure and composition post-impact, so that we can place the results in context.
The more near-Earth asteroids like Dimorphos and Apophis that we study, the greater that context becomes. Perhaps, one day, the understanding that we have gained from these missions will indeed save our planet.
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