Here is what you can see this Saturday night, if the clouds allow. If you are out on Sunday night, each star rises about four minutes earlier than written here and the moon rises 50 minutes later.
Halloween night. Looking west-southwest after sunset, trick-or-treaters will be able to spy the ringed planet of Saturn; it will appear as the brightest star in the region. The almost-as-bright star Antares is just to the left of Saturn and the pair will set below the horizon around 7:00pm.
As the sky darkens tonight, look to the North-eastern horizon where the “Halloween Star" will creep up into the sky. Rising around 6:30pm, Algol, a star whose name means “the demon,” is actually a close pair of stars in which one is cannibalizing the other. The system is in Perseus, which leads our winter parade of constellations which we have been learning about in this weekly column. Perseus the hero precedes the Pleiades or seven sisters, followed by Taurus the bull, and then Orion the hunter.
Halloween night will be a dark one, until the moon rises around 10:00pm. We are five days past full, so the moon’s gibbous shape is now waning – or reducing each night until it is a thin crescent shape.
Throughout the night, a dragon haunts the northern sky: the constellation Draco. Its coils wrap around Polaris, Ursa Minor the Little Bear (aka the little dipper). In mythology, Draco guarded a golden apple tree for Hera, the queen of the gods. As a reward, Hera placed the dragon in the sky among stars.
Saturday and Sunday early morning
The cluster of three planets that we have been watching for the last few weeks will still be together this weekend. The cluster will be rising in the due east about 3:30am. Jupiter is the uppermost planet of the cluster. The planet Venus, also known as the “morning star,” is to the right and just above the much-fainter Mars. These two planets are very close to each other in the sky, less than the width of a finger held at arm’s length. Jupiter is the largest planet in our solar system, but it is so far away that Venus is brighter. Mercury, a tiny spec almost impossible to discern, has separated from the pack, rising about 5:30am only a few minutes before the sky starts to lighten up for daytime and all the stars fade.
