Welcome to the University of Texas Skywatchers Report for Monday October 26th through Sunday November 1st.
The second full moon for the month of October is on Saturday the 31st so we’ll have a waxing gibbous moon for the workweek and start into the waning gibbous phase at the end of the weekend. This full moon is known as the Hunter’s Moon, and as the second full moon in a month, it is also called a Blue Moon. Having a full moon on Halloween is fairly rare, especially when you take time zones and time changes into account. For those of us in the US central time zone, the last Halloween full moon was in 1955 and the last Halloween full moon visible for the entire planet was in 1944. This year, most of the globe will see the full moon on the 31st, but some parts of Australia, New Zealand, and nearby islands will see the full moon in the early hours of November 1st.
Jupiter and Saturn are up in the south just after sunset and are still visible for a few hours in the evening. Jupiter is setting at 11:30 p.m. at midweek, followed by Saturn at midnight.
Mars is rising at 5:45 p.m. at midweek and is setting at 6:15 a.m. so it is still visible for most of the night. Look for Mars just above the moon on Thursday night.
Uranus is at opposition on Saturday the 31st so it will rise at sunset and will be visible all night. This is a good time to try to spot the 7th planet, although you will need at least binoculars or a small telescope and a good finder chart.
Venus is rising at 5 a.m., a little over 2 and a half hours before the Sun.
Mercury is emerging from last week’s conjunction with the Sun and is rising about 50 minutes before the sun by the end of the week.
Sunday morning marks the return to Standard Time from Daylight Saving Time here in the US for the states and territories that observe the time change. 1 a.m. to 2 a.m. is the hour that is officially repeated that morning.
All public viewing events on UT campus telescopes are on hold for the remainder of 2020. We will update the website outreach.as.utexas.edu with a new schedule when we are able to resume viewing.
While you’re waiting for in-person telescope viewing to resume, you can tune in to McDonald Observatory live streams from west Texas. You can view past events on the McDonald Observatory YouTube channel and you can follow the observatory on Twitter, Facebook and at McDonaldObservatory.org to be notified of future events.
Thank you for calling the University of Texas Skywatchers Report.
