October’s Night Sky: The Ultimate Halloween Event
Come one, come all to witness the ultimate Halloween event hosted by our night sky! Admission is free and the doors never close. Just take a step outside tonight and look up into the spectacular night sky. A show that has been running since the beginning of time.
As October’s chill night air creeps in the darkness crawls in earlier with each passing evening, decorations start to appear for the hallowed eve.
October is where the magic is not only around us but above us too, as the night sky transforms for this spectacular stellar show.
A few recommendations to get the best experience from this outstanding stellar show:
As always allow your eyes around 20 minutes to adjust to the dark sky. Try to keep phone use to a minimum as this will affect your eyes, and may take longer for them to adjust.
This show is available anywhere and everywhere making it extremely accessible. However, if anyone lives in a busy city like Belfast or Dublin, you will know that stargazing from busier cities can be extremely limited with how much light pollution is created. If this is the case and you live in a busy city, it would be worth while heading to a location with less light pollution.
First up we have the main attraction of this whole event, the Harvest (Hunters) moon. While September’s full moon is usually known as the harvest moon, this year the full moon in October appears closer to the autumnal equinox than September making October the Harvest moon and September the Corn moon. It is also known as the Hunter’s moon because it marked the time of year when people would traditionally hunt animals for food and store meat for the coming winter months when prey would be scarce.
It will cast its luminous glow over us on October 7th just after 3am (GMT). It will also be the first supermoon of 2025 meaning it’s glow will appear larger and brighter than usual. A supermoon is when a full moon is at or near its closest point to earth in its elliptical orbit.
For the best viewing experience of this outstanding attraction (the Harvest moon) try watching it around sunset when it appears near the horizon. During this time the moon will appear larger and will also appear to take on a gorgeous orange hue. Giving us all the Halloween vibes.
You may ask “Why does the moon appear larger on the Horizon” well the answer to that may disappoint…..nobody really knows! This is something called “The Moon Illusion”. There is no actual answer to this but there are many theories. The general theory is how our brain perceives and interprets visual information. So, when things like mountains, buildings or trees surround the view of the moon our brain interprets that the moon is further away making it appear larger due to other objects around it appearing smaller. When its high in the sky surrounded by stars it appears isolated and smaller. But it never actually changes in size – it’s just an illusion. A cool trick to take this effect away and see that the moon never changes in size is to put your thumb up to the moon when it is low on the horizon and then again when it is high in the sky and this will show you that it is always the same size.
Image Credit: What is a Hunter’s Moon? – Universe Today
The reason it will appear orange is very similar to what happens during a sunset. Its light must pass through more of earth’s atmosphere due to it being low on the horizon which will scatter the shorter wavelength of light (blue light) through the atmosphere and leave the longer wavelength of light (red light and orange light) to reach our eyes and dominate.
Next up in our array of attractions we have a beautiful meteor shower!
At the start of the month (October 6th-10th) we will have the Draconids meteor shower which will reach its peak on October 8th.
However, most of its show will be overshadowed by the main attraction, the supermoon. The moonlight from the supermoon will make it difficult to view this minor meteor shower. Although it won’t be completely unviewable, the best time to see this part of the stellar show is at its peak on October 8th just as the sun sets and the moon is only beginning to rise.
A spotlight act telling their ghostly tales and a personal favourite of mine is the stars but more specifically constellations and what lies within them.
There are 88 official constellations in the night sky, and many of them can be seen during October but one of my favourites and a very prominent constellation in the October night sky is Pegasus.
Pegasus has famously been associated with Hercules, as shown in the Disney film. However, the ancient Greeks were very creative and had a very different story to tell.
Pegasus was a winged white horse born from the neck of Medusa when she was slain by Perseus. He was fathered by Poseidon. He then became the steed of Bellerophon used to defeat the Chimera monster. After successfully defeating the Chimera and many other missions Bellerophon got too big for his boots and tried to join the Gods on Mount Olympus. He failed in this task and fell back to earth. Pegasus however, carried on and made it and for a while was a servant to Zeus, used to carry his lightning bolts. To honour Pegasus Zeus then placed him in the night sky among the stars.
The “Great square of Pegasus” is an easily recognisable asterism within this constellation and can be used to help spot Pegasus. An asterism is a prominent star pattern, part of a constellation. This asterism forms the torso of Pegasus and is made up of four bright stars. The first three stars are from Pegasus, Alpha Pegasi (Markab), Beta Pegasi (Scheat) and Gamma Pegasi (Algenib). The last star is now considered to be part of the constellation Andromeda; this star is called Alpha Andromedae and even though it is from another constellation it is still a part of the asterism and is still known as the belly button of the horse.
It is important to know that many cultures around the world have their own stories behind each constellation.
Now this is only a taste of what this ultimate Halloween event has to offer! To see more why not come along to our 2pm ‘Our Night Sky’ show running Tuesday-Sunday where we will go into more detail about this extraordinary event and what secrets lie beyond.