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This is the Griffith Observatory Sky Report through the period ending October 16th, 2020. Here’s what’s happening in the skies of southern California.
The planet Mars reaches opposition—the point directly opposite the sun in the sky—on the morning of October 13. As a result of its position, it will rise in the east at sunset, and set in the west at sunrise. To the unaided eye, Mars, 39 million miles away, gleams brilliantly with a fiery hue against the faint stars of the constellation Pisces the Fishes. It crosses the meridian and is due south at 1:00 a.m. when it is at its highest, 61 degrees above the horizon. Because its image passes through the least amount of Earth’s atmosphere then, the chances are that the sharpest views of the planet through a telescope may be obtained at that time, but from much of the northern hemisphere, Mars is high enough for telescopic examination between about 9:30 p.m. and 4:30 a.m., over which time more than a quarter of a Mars rotation may be observed.
Mars oppositions happen only every 26 months, and because the orbit of Mars is highly off-center with respect to the sun, it won’t be as close to Earth again for another 15 years. If October 13 is cloudy don’t worry, however, the planet will only appear to shrink by 10-percent by the end of the month and it remains an interesting telescopic object through November.
The bright giant planets Jupiter and Saturn straddle the southern meridian during evening twilight, when they are best positioned for telescopic observation. In a few weeks, however, they will first appear lower in the southwest by the time darkness falls, and they will slip into the sun’s glare before the year ends.
The brightest planet, Venus, appears in the east where it is easy to find by 4:30 a.m. Even though Venus is closer to the sun than the Earth, it is now on the far side of its orbit and farther away than the sun. As a result, through a telescope, it looks only half as big as Mars does now, and it shows a gibbous phase, three-quarters illuminated.
The moon’s phase wanes from last-quarter on the 9th to new on the 16th. It appears as a slender crescent above Venus on the 13th, and below it on the 14th. Between the 9th and 16th, moonrise changes from 11:00 p.m. to 6:43 a.m. On the latter date, the new moon is lost in the sun’s glare, so the last morning it will be visible before new moon is the 15th, when it rises at 5:31 a.m. The moon will re-appear in the evening sky on the 17th.
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From Griffith Observatory, I’m Anthony Cook, and I can be reached at Anthony.Cook@lacity.org.