Each month, we share a Star Gazing Guide presented and organized by The Great Orbax, a science communicator from the University of Guelph's department of physics and local science education advocate.
Greetings Star Gazers!
Spooky season is upon us my friends! And while you're spending all that time looking up into the eyes of those 12-foot skeletons that are starting to appear on front lawns throughout the city you may as well keep looking up!
This month we have two meteor showers, including one visible in the early evening! Learn more about those in this month's video Star Gazing Guide.
There are two big stories this month that you may have heard about in the news already. The comet of the century and Earth's new mini-moon.
C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS has appeared in our morning skies and is transitioning to the evening sky around Oct. 12 to 20. Comets are massive space-faring chunks of ice that orbit the Sun. As they approach the Sun they heat up and the ice sublimates into dust and gas that form the comets tail. Comets are notoriously unstable since we're basically watching them fall apart in space. However, if this comet does stay intact, look towards the Western horizon around sunset for what will look like a bright new star. A telescope or binoculars should reveal a bit of a smear of light indicating the comets tail.
Now there's also been talk of Earth gaining a new moon. While the media has kind of overblown the idea of this 10 metre chunk of space rock as a moon, it is still pretty neat. Asteroid 2024 PT5 has delayed its orbit around the Sun by falling into the gravitational pull of Earth. It will spend the next two months in a slow orbit around us, but won't complete one full orbit before it continues on its journey towards the Sun. Now before you get your hopes up of seeing two moons in our sky, 2024 PT5 will be ten times the Earth to Moon distance away, and as I mentioned earlier is about 1/350000th the size of our Moon. What that means is that you'll need a fairly advanced telescope to catch a glimpse. It also turns out that this isn't that rare of an occurrence and actually happens a few times per decade.
I hope you enjoy this month's Star Gazing Guide. If you want to learn more, check out the October Star Gazing Guide video on the Guelph Physics YouTube channel. Not only is Star Gazing a great way to learn about space, planets and the stars but it's also a great way to spend time with other curious minds.
Until next month I wish you clear skies and I hope you take some time ... to look up.
