Mariner 4 made the first successful flyby of Mars in 1964 and Vikings 1 and 2 made landings in 1975, sending back thousands of images and testing the Martian soil for signs of life. Today three orbiters, Mars Odyssey, Mars Express and Mars Reconnaissance, are surveying the planet’s surface while the lander Curiosity has been exploring the vast Gale Crater since 2012 and is getting ready to try to climb Mount Sharp, a Mount Rainier-sized mountain located in the crater’s center. Now they are being joined by two more orbiters, the MAVEN (U.S.) and MOM (India) that will orbit on Sept. 21 and Sept. 24, respectively, to study Martian atmospheric conditions such as weather, temperature and composition in more detail, with the goal of determining conditions that would face future astronauts landing on the Red Planet’s surface.
Focus on the planets
Mercury begins the month on the southwestern horizon about a half hour after sunset. It will disappear within a week to reappear in the east about an hour before sunrise at month’s end.
Venus rises almost with the sun as October begins and is essentially lost in the sun’s glare all month. It reappears in the night sky in December.
Mars opens October fairly high in the southwest at dusk and sets about three hours after the sun. Mars keeps company with Antares, its near rival in both color and brightness.
Jupiter rises in the southeast around 3:00 a.m. on Oct. 1 and two hours earlier by month’s end. Jupiter is the brightest point of light in the sky and the belts and zones on the giant planet are readily visible, as are the antics of its four major moons as they dance about and across the face of the gas giant.
Saturn is relatively low in the west-southwest an hour after sunset. Saturn sets two hours after the sun on Oct. 1 and less than an hour by month’s end. By then the planet will likely be too low in the twilight to spot. On Oct. 25 a thin crescent moon lies just near Saturn’s upper left.
Uranus, in Pisces, is visible high in the south at midnight, where it is an easy target with binoculars. Uranus lies very near the total lunar eclipse of the moon on Oct. 8, where its blue-green disk may be found near the reddish eclipsed moon.
Neptune is in the southwest among the stars of Aquarius, but its blue-gray disk is dim and difficult to spot. Use the finder chart in the September issue of Sky & Telescope to help find these two elusive planets.
October events
1 Sunrise, 6:33 a.m.; sunset, 6:17 p.m. First quarter moon, 3:32 p.m.
6 Moon at perigee, or closest approach to Earth, today.
8 Full moon, 6:51 a.m. The full moon of October is called the Hunter’s Moon and is special in that it will undergo a total eclipse. The stages are partial eclipse, 5:15 a.m.; total eclipse begins, 6:25 a.m.; mid-eclipse, 6:55 a.m.; and total eclipse ends at 7:24 a.m.
15 Last quarter moon, 3:12 p.m.
18 Moon at apogee, or farthest distance from Earth, today. The moon is situated just below, and slightly to the right of, Jupiter.
21 The Orionid meteor shower peaks today. A waning crescent moon should not be a problem and viewers can expect up to 25 per hour of bright, fast, meteors that often leave a persistent train.
23 New moon, 5:55 p.m. There will be a partial eclipse of the sun today, but Maine and the Atlantic Provinces are slated to miss out altogether.
27 Mars is to the left of the crescent moon in the southwest an hour after sunset.
30 First quarter moon, 10:48 p.m.
31 Sunrise, 7:12 a.m.; sunset, 5:26 p.m. The sun enters Libra on the ecliptic.
Send astronomical queries to Clair Wood at cgmewood@aol.com or care of the Bangor Daily News, Features Desk, P.O. Box 1329, Bangor, ME 04402.