The coming days involve a lot of activity amongst our neighbors. The Moon, Jupiter, Saturn, and Mars will all be arranged in some interesting fashion in the near future.
On October 6th, Jupiter will slip behind the moon. The event is called an occultation. Low in the eastern sky at 3:31am, Jupiter will move behind the crescent moon and appear on the other side about forty minutes later. This particular occurrence is rather rare, happening on average once every 13 or so years. "It can really vary between 13 to 30 to 40," says Bob King. "And if it's cloudy that night you might have to wait 40 to 50 years to see something like this."
Mars will soon be aligned with a beehive in the sky. A star cluster referred to as the beehive will be the backdrop for Mars in a couple of weeks. "It reminded somebody of a bunch of bees buzzing around a hive, and so they called it the beehive," says King. If you can spot Mars, there will be a fuzzy spot visually surrounding it on the night of October 11th.
And if you want a good look at Saturn, there's no better time than now. On October 4th, Saturn will be as close to Earth as it gets. At a mere 784 million miles away, a good pair of binoculars should be enough to spot the rings of our solar system's second largest planet.
You can hear Astro Bob's Backyard Astronomy every other Tuesday at 8:20am on Northland Morning.
