Natural Calendar - October 2022

The purpose of this feature is to give scout leaders, educators and naturalists an idea of some of the natural events coming up each month.  We will try to cover a variety of natural events ranging from sky events to calling periods of amphibians, bird and mammal watching tips,  prominent wildflowers and anything else that comes to mind.  We will also note prominent constellations appearing over the eastern horizon at mid-evening each month for our area for those who would like to learn the constellations.  If you have suggestions for other types of natural information you would like to see added to this calendar, let us know!

Though we link book references to nationwide sources, we encourage you to support your local book store whenever possible.

 

Notes From September 2022

 
Askar FRA 400 Astrograph on ZWO Mounting
The last couple of weeks in September brought cool sunny days and dark skies to Lookout Mountain. I recently purchased a small astrograph to take some wide-angle shots of the sky and I was happy to get a chance to try it out. The astrograph is an Askar FRA 400, which consists of a four-element Petzval lens design plus a field-flattener. The Petzval design is about one hundred and fifty years old and was originally designed for portrait lenses. It's had quite a run!

The camera, filter wheel, mounting and tripod are by ZWO Optical Company. The tripod is carbon fiber, and the whole assembled telescope can be picked up and moved around if needed. The drive for the mounting is a relatively new type of drive called a harmonic drive. As you can see from the image at right, it needs no counterweight! Both the telescope and mounting are very precisely made, and the performance is appropriately heavenly. In the image at right the telescope is coupled to a ZWO filter wheel and camera. Partly visible is a small guide telescope and camera, and beneath the tube there is a small processor that choreographs the scope's movements throughout the night without outside input. The plan for the night is entered into the processor via an app on my cell phone.

I spent many pleasant evenings in a lounge chair beside the scope in my backyard, using my binoculars to hunt for various galaxies and clusters. Once started, the telescope automatically focuses, changes filters, guides itself and flips over to the other side of the tripod when it reaches the zenith.

Since the moon was still bright on September 12th, I decided to use narrow-band filters for my first image. These filters allow only a very small slide of the spectrum to reach the camera, and so are not affected very much by moonlight as would typical red, green and blue filters. I chose the large patch of nebulosity in Cepheus known as the Elephant's Trunk Nebula. This image primarily shows vast clouds of glowing hydrogen.

 
The Elephant's Trunk Nebula, September 12th - 18th, 72mm Askar FRA 400 Astrograph.

The brightest parts of the nebula are about three degrees across in the image above. That means that if it were bright enough to see with the naked eye in the night sky, you could fit six full Moons across its diameter. Across the nebula there are dark patches of dust and gas that look like mutant tadpoles swimming through the nebulosity. The "elephant's trunk" extends from bottom right towards the center of the nebula.

 
The Elephant's Trunk nebula is about 300 light-years in diameter and about 3,000 light-years distant. The star at top right is Mu Cephie, a red supergiant. It is one of the largest known stars in our galaxy. If you were to put it in place of our sun, its radius would extend outward to somewhere between the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn!

At right is a diagram showing the relative sizes of the Sun and planets. The Sun comprises 99.8 percent of the total mass of the solar system. The planet Jupiter is responsible for 2/3rds of the remaining mass. The Earth is only about 1/330,000 of the mass of the Sun.

Now consider that one billion Sun's would fit inside of Mu Cephei!

Mu Cephie is also known as Herschel's Garnet Star. The deep orange-red color may not be obvious to the naked eye, but binoculars bring out the color well. The constellation Cepheus is well placed for viewing in the evening sky now

 

By September 23rd I could take images without the Moon present, so I decided to take a natural color image of the Andromeda Galaxy, Messier 31. One of the very first things I do on cool fall evenings is to take a quick look at Messier 31 to check the transparency of the sky. On a good night M31 is easy to see with the naked eye. On a mediocre night it may be only seen with averted vision (looking to one side of the galaxy rather than right at it) and in light-polluted areas it may not be visible at all. Its position is shown on the constellation charts for last month's Natural Calendar.

Don't expect to see the detail and colors in the image below. Most deep sky objects like M-31 just give you hints of their grandeur in visual views. The galaxy was first shown in the "Book of Fixed Stars" by Persian astronomer Al-Sufi in AD 964. He referred to it as "the little cloud", and that's exactly what it looks like in the night sky; a faint colorless, oval glow. Simon Marius, a contemporary of Galileo, has one of my favorite descriptions of the way it looks in a small telescope or binoculars. He described its appearance as, "the light of a candle shining through horn".

Although its apparent size in the night sky is about the same as the Elephant's Trunk Nebula, the Andromeda Galaxy is much more distant, about 2,600,000 light-years away. When you looking at it you are looking at ancient light. To appreciate the scale, look at the outer spiral arms in the image below. You will see tiny reddish spots along the arms. Those spots are in reality areas of glowing hydrogen comparable to the Elephant's Trunk Nebula shown above.

 

The Great Andromeda Galaxy, September 23rd, 72mm Askar 400 Astrograph

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
 

 

Also seen in the image are two of the brighter satellite galaxies of Messier 31, Messier 32 above and to the left of the core and Messier 110 below.

My final night of viewing was on September 28th. The wind was blowing hard and it didn't appear to be a good night for imaging. But the sky was the clearest I've ever seen it here. There was the usual feeling I get on very clear nights that there was an extra layer of stars added to the my normal views. But the dark rift in the Milky Way was very, very dark. The "Northern Coalsack", a dark nebula near the bright star Deneb at the tail of the swan, was indeed looking like a coalsack. I have never seen it like that before.

I raised my 10x30 image-stabilized binoculars to look at the Andromeda Galaxy. To my surprise both of the satellite galaxies were visible with averted vision, something I haven't seen in those binoculars for a long time. Most of the time, even on good nights, I can only see M-32, the brighter satellite galaxy that is closer to the core of M-31. It was a nice end to the evening.

 
 

Sky Events for October 2022

The Orionid Meteor Shower peaks in the morning hours of October 21st.  


Mars, June 11th, 2016. 20" Newtonian Reflector and ZWO ASI 120MMS camera. 
Morning Sky:

Venus will continue to rise before the Sun, but it will sink lower and lower into the morning twilight each day. Venus will disappear into the Sun's glare around the middle of October. Mercury reaches greatest elongation from the Sun on October 8th. Look for it about 40 minutes before sunrise low in the eastern sky. A flat eastern horizon will help as will a pair of binoculars. Put your binoculars up at sunrise to avoid permanently damaging your eyes.

Evening Sky:

Look for bright Jupiter in the eastern sky after sunset in Pisces, below the "square of Pegasus". Saturn transits about 3 hours after sunset in Capricornus. Mars rises about 3 hours and 45 minutes after the sunset in Taurus. Mars and Aldebaran, the red eye of the bull, make a striking pair! This is a great time to start observing Mars. Mars comes to opposition in December. The red planet is appearing large enough to show some details to patient observers using small telescopes.

 

Constellations:

Able 39, June 6th, 2016, a faint planetary nebula in Hercules. Note the
faint galaxies that can be seen through the nebula!
 

The views below show the sky looking east at 10:15pm EDT on October 15th.  The first view shows the sky with the constellations outlined and labeled.  Star and planet names are in green.  Constellation names are in blue.  The second view shows the same scene without labels.  Prominent constellations include Triangulum, the Triangle, Aries, the Ram, and Cetus, the Sea Monster.  Auriga, the Charioteer, with its bright star Capella, and Taurus, the Bull, are rising in the northeast.  The bright star Aldebaran, a red giant representing the eye of the bull, should just be rising.

Above Aldebaran, look for the Pleiades,, a beautiful open star cluster.  Also called the "Seven Sisters," it has been known since antiquity.  In Japan it is known as Subaru, and the Subaru automobile is named for this cluster.  Before the Gregorian calendar reform in 1582, the Pleiades culminated around midnight on October 31st, and it has been traditionally associated with Halloween. 

Clear moonless fall nights are a great time to hunt down deep sky objects in Cygnus.  The constellation is just about directly overhead and objects like the Veil Nebula or the Cocoon Nebula are at their best. Don't expect to see the bright colors that long-exposure CCD images capture. 

 
 
 

 

October 15th, 10:15pm EDT, Looking East

 
 

October 15th, 10:15pm EDT, Looking East

On Learning the Constellations: 

We advise learning a few constellations each month, and then following them through the seasons.  Once you associate a particular constellation coming over the eastern horizon at a certain time of year, you may start thinking about it like an old friend, looking forward to its arrival each season.  The stars in the evening scene above, for instance, will always be in the same place relative to the horizon at the same time and date each October.  Of course, the planets do move slowly through the constellations, but with practice you will learn to identify them from their appearance.  In particular, learn the brightest stars for they will guide you to the fainter stars.  Once you can locate the more prominent constellations, you can "branch out" to other constellations around them.  It may take you a little while to get a sense of scale, to translate what you see on the computer screen or what you see on the page of a book to what you see in the sky.  Look for patterns, like the stars that make up the constellation of Perseus.

The earth's rotation causes the constellations to appear to move across the sky just as the Sun and the Moon appear to do.  If you go outside earlier than the time shown on the charts, the constellations will be lower to the eastern horizon.  If you observe later, they will have climbed higher.  To observe faint objects, it's always better to wait until they are high in the sky.

As each season progresses, the earth's motion around the sun causes the constellations to appear a little farther towards the west each night for any given time of night.  The westward motion of the constellations is equivalent to two hours per month. 

Recommended:

Sky & Telescope's Pocket Star Atlas is beautiful, compact star atlas. 

A good book to learn the constellations is Patterns in the Sky, by Hewitt-White

For sky watching tips, an inexpensive good guide is Secrets of Stargazing, by Becky Ramotowski. 

A good general reference book on astronomy is the Peterson Field Guide, A Field Guide to the Stars and Planets, by Pasachoff.  The book retails for around $14.00. 

The Virtual Moon Atlas is a terrific way to learn the surface features of the Moon.  And it's free software.  You can download the Virtual Moon Atlas here.

Apps:  The Sky Safari 6 basic version is free and a great aid for the beginning stargazer. I really love the Sky Safari 6 Pro.  Both are available for iOS and Android operating systems.  There are three versions.  The Pro is simply the best astronomy app I've ever seen.  The description of the Pro version reads, "includes over 100 million stars, 3 million galaxies down to 18th magnitude, and 750,000 solar system objects; including every comet and asteroid ever discovered."

You may also want to try the very beautiful app Sky Guide. Though not as data intensive as Sky Safari, Sky Guide goes all out to show the sheer beauty of the night sky. Great for locating the planets.

Another great app is the Photographer's Ephemeris.  Great for finding sunrise, moonrise, sunset and moonset times and the precise place on the horizon that the event will occur.  Invaluable not only for planning photographs, but also nice to plan an outing to watch the full moon rise.  Available for both androids and iOS operating systems.

 

Amphibians:

Southern Leopard Frog
When the evening temps begin to drop, listen for Southern Leopard Frogs calling during their fall breeding period.  Listen also for Spring Peepers to call from patches of woods.  Upland Chorus Frogs sometimes give a very dry, raspy version of their call in October.  Warm-weather species like treefrogs seldom call now, but you can sometimes find them foraging in trees and shrubs.  You can locate many of the frogs and toads that have been calling more frequently earlier in the year by driving the back roads slowly on rainy nights.  This is a two person job.  One person watches the road for amphibians and one person looks out for other vehicles.  Continue to look for salamander species that breed in the fall, like the Marbled Salamander.

Recommended:  The Frogs and Toads of North America, Lang Elliott, Houghton Mifflin Co.


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Nature Notes Archives:  Nature Notes was a page we published in 2001 and 2002 containing our observations about everything from the northern lights display of November 2001 to frog and salamander egg masses.

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