OCTOBER  2026

Moon Phases

Third Quarter Saturday 3rd     New Moon Sunday 11th     First Quarter Monday 19th    Full Moon Monday 20th

Moon Distance

Saturday 17th is lunar apogee (furthest from Earth) at 406,643 km. Thursday 29th is lunar perigee (nearest to Earth) at 364,407 km.

Planets

Mercury is now visible low in the west at dusk for two hours before setting. Venus will soon move in front of the Sun for its inferior conjunction, but this month it can still be seen brightly in the west as the 'evening star' before setting two hours after sunset.

Mars is returning to our skies after its recent pass behind the Sun. It can be seen rising in the east in the early morning before fading from view in the dawn light.

Jupiter has also emerged from its passage behind the Sun, its solar conjunction. This bright Jovian planet is visible in the early morning in the east and will move across the north east until eclipsed by dawn's light ahead of sunrise.

Saturn with its yellow hue continues to be visible in the east in the evening as darkness descends. It will move across the northern sky before setting before dawn the next morning.

Meteors

The Orionids appear from the 15th-29th but peak on the 21st-22nd with perhaps 30 meteors per hour from midnight until dawn. Centred on Orion near the red supergiant star Betelgeuse, they are typically very fast and bright entering the atmosphere at 66 km per second and vaporising 100 km above the surface leaving persistent trails. Dr Tanya Hill and Professor Jonti Horner explain the meteor shower in The Conversation.

Stellarium view for Orionids around 1am AEDT / Source: Stellarium

The Orionids shower was first recorded by the Chinese in 288 AD and is associated with Comet Halley. In 1705, Edmund Halley, after studying records of comets that seemed to re-occur and using Isaac Newton's new laws of motion, calculated the comet's orbit and predicted its return in 1758 (something he did not live to see). Every 75 years Comet Halley passes through the inner solar system leaving a trail of particles for Earth to pass through twice a year - the April/May Eta Aquarids and the October Orionids.

Stars and constellations

In the north

Visible this season are Aquila (the Eagle) and its principal star Altair (Alpha Aquilae) directly north.

In the west

Scorpius is now moving down to the west with the red-giant star Antares the middle of three stars that mark the scorpion's body. High above following the scorpion is the asterism 'the teapot' which gives you the position of the bow and arrow held by the centaur Sagittarius. The centre of our Milky Way galaxy lies in that direction some 26,000 light years away.

In the east

Formalhaut in Piscis Austrinus (Southern Fish) is the bright evening star in the east this month. But as spring ends and we move towards summer we will progressively begin to see from the north-east to the south-east a rich collection of night sky objects:

• The beautiful Pleiades cluster (the Seven Sisters).
• Taurus the bull with red giant star
• The inverted Orion the hunter (with the right way up 'Saucepan' at its centre), and red supergiant
• Canis Major and the brightest night time star Sirius (also known as The Dog Star).

In the south

In a dark sky in the south-east are the isolated Large and Small Clouds of Magellan (our galaxy's nearest neighbours) as well as the vast band of billions of stars and dark dust clouds that make up what we can see of our own galaxy, the Milky Way. In the evenings this month it runs in a broad arc from south to north. From our location in our disc-shaped galaxy we have an edge-on view along the plane of the galaxy where the density of stars is greatest. 

As you look away from the Milky Way to either side of the sky you see far fewer stars because in those directions you are looking through only a few thousand light years out into intergalactic space, to the north or to the south of the galactic plane.

Low in the south-west are the Pointers, Alpha and Beta Centauri, in the constellation of Centaurus (the other centaur in our night skies). Following the line of the two bright Pointers leads to the Crux (Southern Cross).

On this day

3rd 1942 The first object to reach space, the experimental V2 ('Vengeance') rocket, was launched from Peenemünde, Germany in a brief flight over the Baltic.
4th 1957 The Sputnik (USSR) was launched to become the first artificial satellite.
4th 2004 The SpaceShipOne was launched as the first private spacecraft into space.
5th 1923 Edwin Hubble (USA) established that M31, the Andromeda Galaxy, is separate to our own Milky Way Galaxy.
7th 1959 The first photos of the moon's far side are taken by Luna 3 (USSR).
9th 1604 A Type1A supernova 20,000 light years away in constellation Ophiucus is visible from Earth, and on 17th Johannes Kepler observes and publishes his account of the new star. It is the most recent supernova visible to the naked eye in our galaxy.
10th 1967 The United Nations' Outer Space Treaty on the peaceful exploration and use of space was established. By now 109 nations are signatories and several other agreements and conventions have been created to cover space law.
11th 1958 The Pioneer 1 (USA), a battery- powered probe aiming for lunar orbit, fails to reach escape velocity and burns up.
11th 1968 The first crewed Apollo mission, Apollo 7 (USA), launched into Earth orbit in test of Saturn V rocket and Command and Service Module (CSM).
12th 1964 The USSR's Voskhod 1 ('Sunrise') was the first spacecraft with a crew of more than one. In this case, three cosmonauts who orbited for 41 hours.
13th 1773 The Whirlpool Galaxy M51a, 31 million light years away in constellation of Canes Venatica, is discovered by astronomer Charles Messier.
18th 1967 The Venera 4 (USSR) is the first probe to analyse the atmosphere of another planet when it does so at Venus.
19th 1910 The birth of Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar who had major insights into stellar evolution and black holes.
24th 1998 The Deep Space 1 (USA) probe was launched to test innovative technologies, including an ion engine, while visiting Asteroid Braille and Comet Borrelly.
27th 1994 The first sub-stellar object orbiting a star is found, a brown dwarf at Gliese 229.
29th 1991 The Galileo probe (USA) is the first to visit an asteroid, Gaspra 951, on its way to Jupiter.
31st 2000 The Expedition 1, first resident crew of the International Space Station, arrived by a Russian Soyuz craft for a 136 day stay lasting until March 2001. The three-person crew (one American and two Russians) made the station fully operational, hosted three visiting US Space Shuttles, and received two Russian Progress supply vehicles.