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Preston: What's Up for October?
What to look for this month at sunrise and sunset
and two brilliant stars vying for the "pole" position.
On October 10, look for the five-day-old crescent Moon
to join Venus and bright-orange-colored Antares
in the southwest after sunset.
Then watch as Venus closes on Antares
for a close conjunction on the 15th and 16th,
where the two will be only about a degree and a half apart.
[meteor swishes]
During the last week of October,
Mercury pops briefly into view for early risers.
Look for it about 10 degrees above the eastern horizon,
or about the width of your fist held at arm's length,
about 30 to 45 minutes before sunrise.
Then, on October 30th,
in the last couple of hours before daybreak,
look for the crescent Moon
to join brilliant blue-white star Regulus.
[meteor swishes]
All month long, looking high overhead early in the evening,
you'll find two bright stars that over thousands of years
take turns with Polaris being the North Star.
Their names are Vega and Deneb.
Both of these stars are part of the Summer Triangle,
and we introduced the other member of the trio, Altair,
in last month's video.
To find Vega and Deneb, look high overhead
in the first few hours after it gets dark.
Vega is a bluish-white star, and like Altair,
it's a fast rotator, spinning every 12 and a half hours,
compared to our sun's 27-day rotation.
NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope found Vega
to have a debris disk around it
that could be similar to regions in our own solar system.
Deneb is a blue-white supergiant star
that is fusing hydrogen at a phenomenal rate.
With this sort of fury,
the party won't last all that much longer.
Deneb is likely headed for an explosive end
as a supernova within a few million years.
Now, Deneb is much farther away
than most bright stars in our night sky.
This means it's super luminous
to be that bright from so far away.
Because it's so bright, it's one of the most distant stars
you can see with the unaided eye.
These stars rotate around the northern celestial pole.
This time of year, they dip toward the western horizon
before setting in the pre-dawn hours.
Both Vega and Deneb are part of a special group of stars
that take turns being the pole star in the north
as Earth's axis wobbles in a circle
over a period of 26,000 years.
For now, the distinction of North Star belongs to Polaris
for at least a few hundred years more.
[meteor swishes]
Finally, October 16th is
International Observe the Moon Night,
when everyone is invited to learn
about the science and exploration of the Moon.
Visit the link on-screen to find out how you can take part.
And here are the phases of the Moon for October.
You can catch up on all of NASA's missions
to explore the solar system and beyond at nasa.gov.
I'm Preston Dyches from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
and that's What's Up for this month.
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