Astrophotography Monthly Night Sky Guide - October 2020

welcome back to the monthly sky guide this time we're talking about october 2020 and my goodness do we have a month ahead of us we have six conjunctions two planets reaching opposition a full moon on halloween and a whole bunch more coming up so stick around as we jump into this monthly sky guide so as always let's start off with our lunar dates now october starts off with a full moon on the second of the month nice and early and this is a harvest micro moon so this is where we have a full moon but the moon is at the farthest distance away from earth so it appears the smallest in the sky we then have our third quarter on the 10th our new moon on the 17th of the month and our first quarter on the 24th now on the 31st of october yes on halloween we will have a bit of a special treat most of the world those of you who are not plus eight or plus nine time zones or more will experience a full moon on halloween this will also be the second full moon of the month making it a blue moon so we will have a blue full moon on halloween how exciting for those of you who are plus 8 plus 9 plus 10 plus 11 utc time unfortunately the full moon will actually occur technically on the 1st of november but the moon will still be very much almost full on the 31st so you will still get that eerie eerie full moon halloween feeling it just might technically become full moon after midnight so this means if you are looking to do moon imagery you want to do it in the first half of the month if you want to do deep space imagery then you want to do it in the middle to the second half of the month now quick summary of some of the planets we have still good viewing on venus jupiter saturn and neptune mars and uranus are reaching their opposition this month mercury reaches its highest peak of elevation and orion and its friends are well on their way back and ready to image next let's jump into special objects and events and wow we have a lot of them so to start off on the 8th of october we have the drachnids meteor shower so this is a meteor shower it's a minor meteor shower you can expect up to around 10 meteors per hour or zenith per hour then moving on to the 10th of october we have the southern torrid's meteor shower again another minor one at about five zeniths per hour we then move on to the orionids meteor shower on the 21st of october and this is a decent one at around 20 zeniths or meteors per hour that should be one if you are looking to get out to a dark spot it should be quite good because the moon is still only early in its first quarter so it shouldn't be too overwhelming yet next up we have a cool mars and moon conjunction the mars and moon will be less than one degree apart and we will go into the details of that as we go into our deep dives now let's dive deep into our solar system and what is happening in our cosmic backyard so as we mentioned earlier mars is reaching its opposition now this means it is the best time of well two years mars reaches up opposition once every two years so this is the best time to image mars or look at mars if you are into mars now is the best time for that so what this means is mars is going to be the closest point to earth so we orbit the sun faster than mars because we are on a more inwards orbit and so that means we are catching up to mars now and on the 14th of october the sun mars and the earth will be in a straight line and this is around the time when we are closest to mars at this time mars will be about seven times larger than other times of the year and four and a half times brighter now also what this means is that mars will be directly overhead at midnight so if you want the best time to look at or image mars this month it's going to be around 11 pm to 1 am your local time this is because this is when your part of the earth is facing directly away from the sun at midnight and mars is going to be directly behind us from the sun's perspective so it also means not only are we really close to mars but it means when you're looking because mars is going to be directly overhead at midnight it means you're going to be looking through the least amount of atmosphere so you're going to be able to get the clearest and sharpest views of the planet so absolutely this month go out if you do nothing else go out and look at mars and you don't need a telescope to see mars you can see mars at the moment it is rising at about 8 pm uh you look in the east a couple of hours after sunset and you will see mars as a bright orange looking star slowly making its way overhead early in the evenings so absolutely go out there and take some photos either with a wide angle or you can go super narrow and try and take photos of the surface detail of mars but now is the time to do it two years ago when we had the last mars opposition unfortunately mars was obscured by dust had a huge dust storm over the entire planet and that meant that photographs and visually mars didn't look that appealing it just looked like a giant dust ball you couldn't make out surface details but this year thankfully we are lucky there is no huge dust on mars at the moment so we will be able to see the polar ice caps all of the nooks and crannies of that beautiful little planet in all of its orange glory now on the 2nd of october there is a very very close conjunction between mars and the moon and if you are in the americas you are in a great spot to see this and if you are in south america then you will see mars almost kiss the side of the moon now the moon is going to be full so it will look spectacular when mars is so incredibly close to it at the applause which is the closest point that these two objects will create the moon and mars will be less than one arc minute away from each other this is exceptionally close from our point of view looking at them and it will be very cool to see these two objects approach each other and then go past each other unfortunately there is no for occultation of mars this time that happened last month in september for those of you who managed to catch that that is very exciting but this is still a very cool sight to see and this can be seen with your naked eyes so do go and check that out on the 2nd of october next up let's look at some conjunctions that are happening this month so on the 14th of october we have a venus and moon conjunction they will be within about four and a half degrees of each other within the sky then on the 18th we have a mercury and moon conjunction where they're going to be within six and a half degrees of each other then on the 23rd jupiter and the moon will have a reasonably close conjunction at about 2 degrees then saturn and the moon will have a conjunction also on the 23rd at about 2.4 degrees then on the 30th we have mars and the moon with a conjunction up to around two and a half degrees depending where you are finally mercury is reaching its highest point of elongation this is where mercury is the highest point above the horizon from our point of view and why is this good well this is good because it means it's the furthest distance away from the sun so we can actually see it the best because the sun has set and mercury is still high so you can get that distance away from the sun now on the 2nd of october mercury is at the peak of its elongation for the evening so this means after sun has set mercury will be hanging in the sky at its highest point now this is still not high up this is still only about 25 degrees 20 degrees above the horizon but this is the greatest separation between the sun and mercury that we will get so make sure if you do want to view or image mercury you are doing it at the start of this month so within the next couple of days that'll give you the best viewing because you're looking through the least amount of sky or you can wait a bit longer for the sky to get a little bit darker so you can try and make out a little bit more of that detail and contrast against the night sky rather than an evening sky as we mentioned earlier uranus is also reaching its opposition technically it happens at the start of november but it is still a great time to look at uranus um it is as bad as close as it gets and uh it is definitely visible uranus is definitely visible in a moderate telescope especially if you're under dark skies and you can absolutely photograph this planet it will be small it will be faint but you will see a distinct teal color to it which is very cool next up onto the other planets venus jupiter saturn and neptune are all still good for imaging at the moment these planets are moving away from us or we're moving away from them at the moment so as time goes on they will get worse for imaging until we start to catch up with them again as they move around the back of the sun but they're still going to be good for imaging for about the next two months until they get further and further away from us at that point they'll start setting close to the sun and we won't be able to get good views on them until they come around the back side of the sun in another six months so that's it for the local solar system and major events let's jump onto the computer now and do a deep dive in the northern and southern hemispheres in stellarium so let's jump into the northern hemisphere looking from a wide angle and landscape perspective the milky way core has now set after sunset so we will no longer be able to see the milky way core until next year we do however have some great opportunities here as these huge dust lanes still extend a long way up into the sky and we get this really nice vertical milky way look if you can position this with some nice foreground objects or next to something like a big tree you could really see you know how high this extends and it could look really really lovely in the early mornings as well we can see there is a little bit of the tail end of the milky way starting to poke up in the southeast so if you want you can get some of this this will also include the beautiful orion cluster so if you're looking to get a wide angle shot with some nebulosity it is a great time to get that ground and sky nebulosity in that one image works especially well into dark skies or if you have a hydrogen alpha filter where you can take some regular shots and then you can take some shots in just hydrogen alpha and overlay those you'll really see that nebulosity just pop out of the sky so now let's have a look a bit at some deep space things happening this month early in the evening we can see that the andromeda galaxy is really nice and high in the sky andromeda is a fantastic target you do not need a big telescope with a long focal length in fact you want the opposite you want a reasonably wide telescope and you can even get away with 100 millimeter lens and get some really nice shots of the andromeda galaxy we also quite close by have the triangulum galaxy which is another really nice galaxy it is a lot fainter than the andromeda so i would suggest trying the andromeda first if you're looking to get into galaxies but triangulum is another beautiful galaxy that is quite high in the sky at the moment for northern hemisphere you can of course see mars is making its debut and i would absolutely recommend if you're going to take photos of anything this month to make sure it is mars it is looking it's absolute best at the moment moving on further into the night we can see that orion down here is rising after midnight and is getting quite high in the sky there's a lot of wonderful nebulosity in orion obviously you have the great orion nebula itself with the running man you also have the horsehead nebula and flame nebula up here you have the ghost nebula up in here nearby we also have the beautiful rosette nebula i love this one here and then as you can see faintly there is a really big amount of nebulosity in general around orion so i would definitely suggest if you haven't tried it before do a wide angle shot of orion it looks fantastic to get that background nebulosity moving up we also have the pleiades these seven sisters look fantastic and are at a great spot after midnight to take photos of we also have the california nebula at the moment and the flaming star nebula these are all great targets and they will continue to get better as we move into the winter months for the northern hemisphere so now it's a great time to start working out how you want to frame these objects and if you're doing deep space photography start getting some time on them and you can add that time up over multiple sessions to really get a huge a beautiful image as i mentioned in our solar system discussions as well uranus is also reaching opposition so now is a good time to take photos of this planet as you can see it is still quite a faint magnitude at negative seven but that is the challenge there and i do recommend you trying it if you have the focal length to do so onto the southern hemisphere and the southern hemisphere still has a bit of the milky way core visible this month as you can see early in the evening the milky way core is sitting quite flat on the horizon and if you get an ultra wide shot you can actually still see there is a bit of sort of curve here that you can get which is quite nice so i'd recommend if you're looking to do some shots place the milky way above a nice structure or you can stand there underneath it or something like that and it will look really nice on an ultra wide angle lens you we also have extra possibilities in the southern hemisphere to take photos of the milky way in the early morning you can see the tailing end of the milky way here just before sunrise peaking up above the horizon and this is going to look quite nice if you can get this long tail in they've also got the really bright karina nebula up in here as well as the running chicken nebula these will both be visible if you're under a reasonably dark sky with the rest of this and they will look really nice the karina nebula is one of the brightest nebula in the sky and it always looks fantastic when you can take it in a wide angle shot especially if you can add a hydrogen alpha filter to your gear and you can really make that nebulosity pop out beyond the stars moving into the deep space objects for the night and the southern hemisphere is lucky enough to have the large and small magellanic clouds the large the small magellanic cloud is high up in the night early on as well as 47 takane which is a globular cluster right next to it this is a moderately to large-sized object to image so you don't want to be going too much uh in your focal length you probably want around three to five hundred millimeters of focal length to take an image of this entire field of view you can obviously zoom in and you can see there are some bright nebulous nebulous regions of the small magellanic cloud which you could focus on and takan 47 is also a great object if you want to really take an image of just thousands and thousands and thousands of stars as the night moves on a bit more we can see that the large magellanic cloud here is rising with a tarantula nebula inside it this again is quite a large object in the sky so you'll want a moderate focal length to have a look at it you could again get away around the three to five hundred millimeter effective focal length if you're wanting to do something a little bit deeper the tarantula nebula is beautiful on its own with all these veins of nebulosity mars and uranus are also both looking great at the moment in the southern hemisphere if you take a photo of anything this month it should absolutely be mars as it is reaching its opposition if you have a telescope with long enough focal length or under dark enough skies uranus is also reaching its opposition at the end of the month and is looking very good as the night moves on a little bit more we can also take photos of the pleiades and orion orion is rising now earlier and earlier and is always a fantastic summer target to take photos of we also have a small glimpse of the california nebula so if you are in the southern hemisphere and you want to take photos of one of those iconic northern hemisphere nebula now is a great time to take photos of the california nebula it is still not super high on the horizon as you can see here so it will be a bit of a challenge but as we move into the sort of early hours of the morning you can see it's going to reach about the highest point that it will reach for us so this is the best time of year to take photos of that along with the pleiades and the orion nebula we also have the rosette nebula another favorite of mine this is a really cool looking nebula and a great time of year to start framing and getting your subs on this target the urine nebula also is great as a wider angle photo so if you're looking more around the 100 to 200 millimeter focal length there is a huge amount of nebulosity that surrounds this entire cluster all the way down to here as well and this stuff looks great if you have a hydrogen alpha filter so you can take just hydrogen alpha images and overlay them on top in another couple of months we will also be able to get good shots of the karina nebula the korean nebula is imageable at the moment but it is only just before sunrise so you won't be able to get too much time on it but this will change korean nebula is one of the premium summer nebulas for the southern hemisphere so i'm very much looking forward to getting onto that one so that's it for the southern hemisphere plenty of great targets to take photos of though well that wraps up the october monthly sky guide plenty of great targets out there so good luck and clear skies

Channel: Astro With RoRo

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Keywords: astronomy, astrophotography, planets, nebulae, reviews, how to, guide, space, galaxy

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Length: 19min 9sec (1149 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 01 2020