The moon will be fat and bright this Halloween evening as you’re out trick-or-treating. Enjoy a fright! Illustration: Bob king with Stellarium.

Be scared. Be very scared. The moon is almost full tonight and will rise over the costumed masses who’ll be out for a little candy, a party or two and a bit of mischief. With leaves still clinging to the trees and a big moon up, this should be a memorable Halloween. I’ve always enjoyed this special "dark" day of the year, first as a child carrying my bag from house to house, and later as a parent with children. I loved seeing my daughters rush up the walkways and ring doorbells for goodies. "Don’t forget to say thank you now," my wife and I would tell them. Following a tradition that must stretch back a hundred years, they’d come home, dump their bags out onto the floor and count their sweets. Coins, cans of pop and anything healthy would be pushed off to the side. Sometimes I’d try to coax them into sharing a few pieces with good, old dad. They wised up to my sweet tooth in later years.

Full moon happens Monday but it will appear nearly so tonight. As night deepens, ghosts will have a hard time finding a hiding place. The moon’s high path across the sky guarantees short shadows and a bounty of light. Sounds perfect for trick or treating or just plain old walking. Say farewell to October, farewell to daylight saving time and kiss the summer goodbye. November’s coming and it’s time for man and beast to get with the seasonal program. Embrace November you say? Ah, now there’s a trick.

We’ve looked at quite a few different star clusters, galaxies and nebulae in this blog over the months. Many of them go by dry catalog numbers but a select few get nicknames based on their striking appearance. So we have the Ring Nebula, the Saturn Nebula, Red Rectangle and so on. There are also a few scarier names in the lexicon and what better day than today to share them with you. Enjoy.

The Ghost Head Nebula, also known as NGC 2080, is a star-forming clouds of gas and dust. Credit: NASA, ESA and Mohammad Heydari-Malayeri (Observatoire de Paris, France)

The Cat’s Paw Nebula  (NGC 6334) in Scorpius the Scorpion. This is another star-forming region. Credit: ESO

The Red Spider Nebula (NGC 6537) is a planetary nebula in Sagittarius. The star’s original core is buried in bright gas and blowing powerful winds through the nebula. Credit: ESA & Garrelt Mellema (Leiden University, the Netherlands) HST

The Witch Head Nebula (IC 2118), a cloud of dust lit up by Rigel (left) in Orion. Can you see the face? Credit: NASA/Noel Carboni

The Ghost of Jupiter planetary nebula (NGC 3242). Shells of gas were expelled around a dying star, whose core still glows at the center. Credit: Adam Block/NOAO/AURA/NSF

To find Mars, start with Orion and his Belt. Shoot a line downward from the Belt to brilliant Sirius and then go up in nearly a straight line from Sirius to Procyon and onward to Mars. You’ll recognize the planet by its reddish hue. This map shows the sky as you look south-southeast about an hour and a half before sunrise when the planet is high up and the sky unspoiled by the light of the moon. Maps created with Stellarium.

Mars has been approaching the Beehive star cluster in Cancer all week but tomorrow on Halloween it will move right in for a 3-day weekend. It’ll be fun to see the bright, reddish-colored planet mingling with so many little stars. The view in binoculars should be most pleasing. In decent skies you can see the Beehive, also known as Messier 44 (M44), with your naked eye as a soft, misty puff like a dab of Milky Way. With Mars right in front of the cluster the planet will look like it’s wearing a fur ruff.

This closeup view shows Mars and the Beehive through a pair of 7x to 10x binoculars tomorrow morning.

Mars glides north of the center of the cluster and leaves its bounds after Monday morning traveling eastward toward the constellation Leo. Through a telescope, the Red Planet looks a bit peculiar this month. Instead of circular, it’s gibbous in shape like the moon several days past full phase. The inner planets Mercury and Venus go through all phases from crescent to full just like the moon because they orbit between us and the sun. Since the outer planets like Jupiter and Saturn are outside of Earth’s orbit their disks are fully-lit. Sadly, there’s no possibility of seeing a crescent Jupiter from Earth. Mars also lies beyond Earth’s orbit but because it’s relatively nearby there are times when we can peek "around the corner" as it were and see part of its shadowed side.

Mars is currently at a right angle to sun and Earth, a great time to see its gibbous or 3/4 moon phase. Our sightline in late October allows us to see a portion of the dark, unlit side of the planet along with the sunlit side, creating a gibbous phase effect. At a different position in Mars’ orbit (top), we see a fully-lit disk with no phase.Quadrature refers to a planet being 90 degrees or one-quarter (quad) of a 360-degree circle from the sun. Illustration: Bob King

The best time to see Mars in its gibbous phase is at quadrature, when the planet forms a right angle with the sun and Earth. Mars is then 90 degrees from the sun and due south at sunrise. If you face the sun at sunrise and stick your left arm out toward it, then stick your right arm straight out from your side, it would point toward Mars’ direction. Your arms would be at a right angle to each other. Even if you don’t attempt the real thing, just pretend you’re pointing at the sun and Mars and you’ll see what I mean. There are two varieties of quadrature: east and west. Mars is at western quadrature since it lies west of the sun.

Only 88 percent of the planet is illuminated from our perspective this week thanks to its angle to us and the sun. In the coming weeks, as the combined movements of Earth and Mars work to lessen that angle, we’ll see a more fully-lit Mars with less five o’clock shadow. By late December Mars will be red, round and jolly just in time for Christmas.

Meet G1.9+0.3, the Milky Way’s most recent supernova that nobody saw. This composite photo was created from three images. The red was taken by the light of X-rays with the Chandra space telescope in 2007; the blue by the Very Large Array (VLA) radio telescope in 1985. The background starfield is from a recent star survey made in infrared (heat) light. These days astronomers map the universe in as many wavelengths of light as possible for a more complete understand of what they’re seeing. Credit: X-ray (NASA/CXC/NCSU/S. Reynolds et al.); Radio (NSF/NRAO/VLA/Cambridge/D. Green et al.); Infrared (2MASS/UMass/IPAC-Caltech/NASA/NSF/CfA/E. Bressert)

Back around 1866 a massive star exploded near the center of the Milky Way. Obscured by light years of intergalactic dust, not a single person on Earth saw it. It cooked away for almost 120 years until astronomers in 1985, using a telescope that "sees" radio waves from the stars, found the brightly-glowing remnant of the blast in Sagittarius the Archer. It wound up in a catalog with the cryptic-sounding name of G1.9+0.3.

Radio waves easily pass through the fine dust left from previous generations of stars that litters the flat plane of our galaxy and can reveal objects that visible light cannot. Fast forward to 2007 when the orbiting Chandra X-ray observatory examined the same remnant in X-rays, another form of radiation that penetrates with ease. It also passes through skin and bone as we’re aware of when the dentist x-rays our teeth. Chandra showed that since 1985, the glowing ball of fast-moving gas from the explosion has been continuously expanding.

If we could see G1.9+0.3, it would lie just above the spout in the "teapot" of Sagittarius, now setting in the southwestern sky at mid-evening. Created with Stellarium.

Supernovas occur when stars much larger than the sun run out of the nuclear fuel they need to keep themselves lit. Stars stay aflame by first burning hydrogen inside their blazing cores to create helium. Later they chew through helium, carbon, oxygen, neon and more all the way to iron at which point the burning stops. You can’t burn iron to create energy as it turns out. With no burning pressure to hold back the force of gravity, the star collapses in upon itself and then rebounds in a titanic finale of fireworks, flinging material into space at 9,000 to 25,000 miles per second. I’ve seen supernovas in galaxies beyond the Milky Way that are so bright, they temporarily outshine their host galaxies. Additional elements are created in the blast, and both old material and new rush into space along the expanding edge of a shock wave. To live within 30 light years of one would be a terrifying experience. The blast would rival the sun in brightness and send enough energy our way to damage the ozone layer of our atmosphere, allowing large doses of harmful ultraviolet radiation from the sun to reach the ground.

The good news is that chances are slim this will anytime soon. There are no candidate stars anywhere near that close to Earth.

Supernovas do good things too like enrich space with heavier elements like carbon, oxygen, magnesium and iron that are excellent materials for building planets and other stars. And that shock wave? As it sails away from the blast, it compresses existing dust and gas in the star’s neighborhood into dense nebulas within which new stars can form. When it comes to the cosmos, creativity and rebirth are often coupled to violence events. Many supernovas leave behind a supernova remnant or cloud of expanding gas and dust. Some sport a special surprise — a hot, superdense object called a neutron star at their centers or even a black hole.

The lovely SN1987A in the Large Magellanic Cloud. The former star, now invisible at center, is encircled by three rings of glowing gas. One of red rings lies in front of the supernova, the other behind it. The bright spots are beams of radiation related to a possible neutron star or black hole at the center of the remnant. Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/PSU/S.Park & D.Burrows.; Optical: NASA/STScI/CfA/P.Challis

G1.9+0.3 is one a series of supernovae that we’re aware of in our galaxy. The last one that was visible with the naked eye happened in 1987 (top) in one of the Milky Way’s satellite galaxies called the Large Magellanic Cloud, visible from southern latitudes. Before that we have to go back to 1680 to Cassiopeia A which may have been spotted by just one astronomer at the time as a very faint naked eye star. Scientists believe Cas A was faint because it may have cloaked itself in multiple layers of dust before the final blast. To this day, Cas A and numerous other supernova remnants continue to expand like a slo-mo smoke rings.

You can see that all these pretty baubles all have something in common — a roughly spherical shape created by outrushing gases and dust from the center of the original explosion. The photos were taken by the light of X-rays and/or radio waves. All these remnants except the Crab are faint in visible light but emit plenty of X-rays and radio waves as they expand into space.

Further back in time we arrive at Kepler’s supernova which flared into view in the constellation Ophiuchus in the fall of 1604 just a few years before the telescope was invented. This one was widely seen since it grew to be as bright as Jupiter. It was named for astronomer Johannes Kepler, famed for his laws of planetary motion. In 1572 the astronomer Tycho Brahe was the first to report on a "new star" in Cassiopeia that matched Venus in brightness and was visible in the daytime.

RCW 86, the oldest recorded supernova, was seen by Chinese astronomers in 185 A.D. Today a dim remnant glows in the light of X-rays is all that’s left. Credit: handra: NASA/CXC/Univ. of Utrecht/J.Vink et al. XMM-Newton: ESA/Univ. of Utrecht/J.Vink et al.

Before that the supernova of 1054 A.D. in Taurus the Bull grew to be as bright as Venus and was studied closely by the Chinese but inexplicably ignored by the Europeans. Were they blinded to its presence because it violated the widespread belief that stars never changed? When we point our telescopes there today, we see the leftover remains — an eerie, crab-shaped nebula with a neutron star spinning 33 times a second at its center. The supernova in Lupus the Wolf near Scorpius in the year 1006 was the most brilliant on record, rivaling the first quarter moon in brightness while the earliest recorded was in 185 A.D. by the Chinese.

This begs the question of where the supernovas are nowadays. Unless you count Cas A, not a one has been seen since 1604, a gap of over four hundred years. Have they all been hiding behind curtains of galactic dust or will the next one appear tomorrow evening like a mischief maker’s cherry bomb thrown in your front yard?

(Credits for supernova panel above–  Cas A:NASA/CXC/MIT/UMass Amherst/M.D.Stage et al.; Kepler: NASA/CXC/NCSU/S.Reynolds et al.; Crab: NASA/CXC/ASU/J.Hester et al.; Optical: NASA/ESA/ASU/J.Hester & A.Loll; Infrared: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. Minn./R.Gehrz and Lupus: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Rutgers/G.Cassam-Chenaï, J.Hughes et al.; Radio: NRAO/AUI/NSF/GBT/VLA/Dyer, Maddalena & Cornwell; Optical: Middlebury College/F.Winkler, NOAO/AURA/NSF/CTIO Schmidt & DSS)

Students in the community ed astronomy class react as they get their first look at the moon (top) and Jupiter through the big telescope at the UMD planetarium last night. Photo: Bob King

I teach a community education class in astronomy on Tuesday nights at the UMD planetarium. Last night was the final night of the fall session and the first with clear skies. Even the thermometer cooperated with temperatures in the low 40s. We wheeled out a big monster of a telescope that’s been light-starved since the 1970s. It was a 12 1/2-inch reflector made by the Cave company and equipped with a fine mirror and massive equatorial mount.

The scope had been snoozing in the entryway to the planetarium for years where it served as more of showpiece than a working instrument. After a thorough clean-up last week, the scope was ready again for action. Our first target was the moon, resplendent with craters and shadowed peaks. Everyone loved the view. I heard a few "ooohs" and saw a lot of smiles. Next up was the giant Jupiter and three of his moons. More revelations: "I see the cloud belts!" "The planet looks squished." "That’s beautiful."

Another student smiles upon seeing so many craters on the moon so clearly. Photo: Bob King

After we finished with class, we took off for darker skies and stayed up till almost 11, cruising from the Andromeda Galaxy to the Double Cluster, the planet Uranus and then back to the moon and Jupiter. One of the students, a girl named Taylor, shot her very first pictures of the moon just by holding her point-and-shoot camera up to the telescope eyepiece. Once she locked onto that hunk of green cheese, she quickly pressed the shutter button. Moments later we all shared her thrill as we gazed at a crisp image of the moon on the back of the camera. As for Taylor, she couldn’t get enough. She and her dad stayed until 10:30 and left  with a photo album’s worth of images.

One of my greatest pleasures as a teacher is to see and hear the enjoyment someone experiences when they get their first good look at a celestial object. That raw emotional reaction to the beauty of the cosmos communicates instantly between people and electrifies a night out under the stars. Sure I’m tired today but I carry many smiles inside my head.

 – UPDATE: 10:30 Weds. Oct. 28 –

I’ve been getting e-mail from some of our readers that Firefox and perhaps other browsers are preventing them from viewing this site. Messages such as "malicious code" or "this site may harm your computer" are popping up when trying to access Astro Bob. I first learned of the trouble yesterday from a co-worker. Turns out, the blog’s host, areavoices, was hacked last week. Someone inserted malicious code into the website. Google detected it and sent out the warning. The bad stuff was completely removed as of yesterday.

The areavoices team is working with Google to get their website removed from the Google malware blacklist. I’m aware of at least one other blog — my buddy John Lundy’s "Wannabe Birder" –  that’s affected besides my own. The good news is that these blogs are safe to view. The bad news is that it might be another day before the scary warning messages go away.

I thank you all for your interest and support!

The sky as you face east around 11 o’clock local time. A host of new constellations, each with a first magnitude star, are gaining ground in the evening hours. Created with Stellarium

As October rounds the corner headed for November, a host of bright stars that were consigned for months to the morning sky make their appearance in the east before midnight. You can see them in the map above — Castor, Pollux, Betegeuse, Aldebaran and Capella. More follow behind them as the clock ticks toward midnight. Find a spot with a clear view in that direction and enjoy the pageant. Two star clusters we’ve touched on before, the Hyades and Pleiades, are a bonus for your trouble.

Like the next generation of children who will grow up and replace the current one, the winter stars are gradually making headway into autumn. I saw this the other day while on a photo assignment for the newspaper. Three children were lined up in high chairs at a daycare, each looking well-fed and self-satisfied. In their eyes I sensed a question: "What’s next?"

Yes, they will own it all one day just as we have.

This photo of the sun and sunspot group 1029 was taken by the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) earlier today. SOHO is located about a million miles from Earth in the direction of the sun at a place called the First Langrangian Point. Here, where the gravity of sun and Earth balance out, SOHO can sit stably and observe the sun uninterrupted 24 hours a day. Credit: NASA

The sun is still behind the clouds for us today but that doesn’t mean things aren’t bubbling away on its surface. A new sunspot group numbered 1029 emerged late last week has grown quickly to become one of the biggest spot groups of the year. Historically it’s only modest in size but for the current very inactive cycle even that’s good news. Group 1029 has spawned a number of small to moderate solar flares so skywatchers in far northern latitudes should keep their eyes open for northern lights over the coming week.

Sunspots are cooler, highly magnetic regions on the sun’s photosphere, one of the most appropriately-named features in astronomy. Photosphere literally means "sphere of light" and it’s the sun’s blindingly bright surface we try to avoid with our eyes. Within the magnetically-charged spots, instabilities develop which set off solar flares. Like multi-megaton thermonuclear bombs, flares blast material from the sun out into space, some of which charges up our planet’s magnetic field, initiating the northern lights.

The chromosphere is a strikingly colorful layer of gas just above the sun’s photosphere. You can see it during a total solar eclipse or with a special device called a hydrogen-alpha filter. Credit: Luc Viatour

Just above the photosphere is the shallow chromosphere or "sphere of color", so named because it glows a beautiful pink when seen during total solar eclipses. It’s only about 1500 miles thick and like most of the sun is composed of incandescent hydrogen gas. The chromosphere emits light weakly compared to the brilliant photosphere so you can’t see it during the day except with a special filter. Beyond the eggshell-thin chromosphere lies the sun’s vast outer atmosphere called the corona, only visible to most of us during a total solar eclipse.

Coronal loops of hot plasma arc from one side to the other in a sunspot group. Sometimes these loops are open instead of closed. When that happens, a coronal "hole" forms and material streams directly into space often causing auroras here on Earth. Credit: TRACE satellite / NASA

Outside of rare eclipses, astronomers study structures within the corona using satellite and space observatories like SOHO that observe the sun in all wavelengths of light beyond our obscuring atmosphere. The most obvious features in the corona are fiercely hot loops of solar plasma (atoms so hot they’re stripped of their electrons). While the corona extends outward into space nearly a million miles, electrons and other subatomic particles are continuously streaming away from the sun as the solar wind, making the sun’s atmosphere very extensive indeed. Our star’s influence extends even into the coldest, most distant regions of our solar system. Would that it would show its face over our little town today.

SOHO takes photos of the sun regularly all day long. It’s easy to assemble those images online into your own sunspot movie. Click on this link, then click on the "SOHO movie theater" link on the left side of your screen. Now scroll down in the box and select "MDI Continuum", type in start and end dates in the boxes on the right, click "search" then play the movie. For the 1029 group, type in Oct. 22nd for the start date and the 26th for the end date.

Jupiter tonight as viewed in a typical small telescope where south is at the top of the field. Ganymede is shown as a ring because it will just be coming into view shortly before 11:25 p.m. Created with Stellarium.

Don’t forget tonight’s nice conjunction of the moon and Jupiter which is visible all evening. Skywatchers with telescopes can watch the shadow of Jupiter’s moon Io cross the planet’s cloudtops beginning at 10:55 p.m. Central time tonight (Monday). At 11:25 p.m., Ganymede will reappear to the east of the planet after being eclipsed by Jupiter’s shadow. To see the moon emerge from darkness, start watching around 11:15 p.m. For the Midwest, Jupiter will be low in the southwestern sky at the time.

The leaves translated the winds into a hundred fluttering dialects all summer long but now they’re off the job and pasted to the ground. Mostly. It’s amazing how a season can change in just a week’s time. We’ve gone from about 90 percent leaves to maybe 15 percent still remaining. All the machinery of photosynthesis that methodically concocted food for the trees, seeds and sap for birds and insects and shade for humans, has been dismantled leaf by leaf. More and more blackened, rain-soaked trunks and branches stab at the sky — a scene that takes warming up to.

Watch as the moon travels in Jupiter’s directon over the next few nights while moving through the faint constellation of Capricornus the Sea Goat. Try your hand at photographing the duo Monday night when they’re closest. Go out during very early twilight and compose a scene with the moon and Jupiter. If you wait till later, when the moon is bright in a dark sky, you’ll overexpose it while trying to capture Jupiter and the scene. Even point-and-shoot digital cameras work well in twilight. Created with Stellarium.

If it’s clear tonight at your house, take a look at the moon in the south at nightfall. You’ll see it’s sliced neatly in half, a phase called first quarter. Seven days after new moon, the moon has moved about 1/4 of the way around its orbit, hence the name. Around first quarter phase, the terminator, which divides the dark half (left side) from the bright half of the moon, cuts right through what’s called the Southern Highlands. This richly-cratered terrain is the oldest on the moon and composed of lighter material that floated to the surface over four billion years ago when the outer part of the moon was an ocean of fiery magma. The liquid rock eventually cooled to a pale white mineral rich in aluminum and calcium. Later bombardments by meteorites and asteroids shattered the rock and pocked the highlands with bazillions of craters. The large, dark spots that form the "man in the moon" face formed later from basalt lavas that spilled over the surface from deeper within the moon. They’re younger, igneous rocks like the ones that form the cliffs and beaches along Lake Superior’s north shore.

The first quarter moon as seen in a small telescope. The heavily
cratered region near the bottom is called the Southern Highlands.
Photo: Bob King

7x and up binoculars will show the largest of the craters and a telescope will take you to crater heaven. While you’re moongazing, consider that you’re looking at a sphere 2160 miles in diameter. It’s easy to tell a ball is round when you’re holding one in your hands up close. The moon is also a ball but because it’s so far away, our binocular vision can’t distinguish the difference in distance between center and edge so it just looks flat. This difficulty pops up with everything you see in the night sky because even the closest celestial objects are enormously far away. Imagine if you could see the constellations as they really are in three dimensions with stars both nearby and far. I’m certain we’d get lost in the sky every clear night.

We can use our brains to trick our vision sometimes into seeing the moon in 3-D as a sphere but it’s easier with photographs that are taken several months apart and then combined into a 3-D image. Using a pair of 3D blue-and-red glasses, our brain can perceive a third dimension and finally sense the moon as a real sphere. Don’t have a pair? Here are a couple places online where you can buy some: Rainbow Symphony or American Paper Optics. Make sure they’re the blue-red anaglyphic variety.

If you have a pair of 3-D glasses, put them on and take a look.The moon experiences something called libration — a side to side rocking motion as seen from Earth — over the months. By combining photos taken several months apart, libration allows us to see the moon from a 3-D perspective using the special glasses. Photo courtesy: Laurent Laveder.

A sure sign of clear skies overnight — the frosted edge of a leaf. Photo: Bob King

Our evenings have been so cloudy around here I’ve switched to mornings for telescopic observing. The only drawback to spending time at the scope during the wee hours is that the constellation seasons are getting mixed up in my head. Instead of the familiar autumn crew of Jupiter, Pegasus and Andromeda, I step outside the door now and see Orion, Sirius and Mars in their places. I hate to rush winter but the upside has been a great showing of the Orionid meteor shower. Another 16 flew by this morning, two of them as bright as Betelgeuse.

October and November are very changeable times for weather so clouds are to be expected.The other day I finally acted on something I’d read about and thought would be fun to try. Why bother with overcast and cold when you can at least do astrophotography right from your home computer?  There are several websites out there that allow you to aim a variety of telescopes at a target in the sky and take a picture while-U-wait. One of them, called Global Rent-a-Scope (GRAS), will even let you try it for free when you start a trial subscription. 60 minutes of free photo time on telescopes in New Mexico and Australia?  How could I resist?

Yesterday night after being pelted by cold rain, I sat down at the computer, clicked on the GRAS site in Mayhill, New Mexico and checked the weather. A highly sensitive all-sky camera that’s updated by the minute showed a perfect sky. I could even make out the constellations and Milky Way. Even better, since the moon was still up they automatically offered a 24 percent discount. Is this America or what?

The central region of the Andromeda Galaxy photographed through a 6-inch refracting telescope in southern New Mexico. From start to finish, the process took about 20 minutes. Details: 10-minute time exposure in color. Photo: Bob King (I think)

Someone else was using the scope at that moment but it was free a half hour later. As soon as "Available" lit up, I clicked the link and a minute later chose my target — the Andromeda Galaxy. You can also select your favorite object from lists of thousands of other deep sky objects.  As I downed a root beer and some Parmesan garlic chips, an automated script told me every move the telescope made. First it slewed to Andromeda, then locked on the galaxy, focused itself and started the 10-minute-long exposure. A progress bar clued me on how much time was left. When finished, the scope shut down and within minutes an e-mail with the photo attached appeared in my mailbox. Easier than making pancakes.

The screen shot of the Global Rent-a-Scope homepage shows the telescope and camera used to take the photo above. It’s completely automated and can be directed by anyone with a computer, login and a broadband Internet connection. Credit: GRAS

While I used the GRAS site for my photo, I have no association with its creators nor any advertising to sell. I learned of the site from a satellite observer and found it very understandable thanks to a nice set of video tutorials. The free 60 minutes was a big draw. Another excellent, user-friendly site to check out is the SLOOH Space Camera, which features an animated character named Otto who leads you step-by-step through the imaging process. There are others as well — just do a search for "remote telescopes". Each site has multiple telescopes ranging from wide-field refractors to large, powerful reflectors. The scopes are spread across the continents so you can photograph any part of the sky any time of day or night, provided the weather’s good and the winds aren’t gusting. All offer a regular subscription rate if you want to delve more deeply into astrophotography.

I have to say it was a blast to take a photo of Andromeda 1500 miles from my house on a rainy night. I better be careful, this could become addicting.

Highlights from our planet updater for this coming week include Mars’ close approach to the Beehive star cluster and the moon-Jupiter pairing on the 26th. Illustration: Bob King

Clouds have returned to the region for the time being but don’t let that take away your hope. Openings in the overcast can appear unexpectedly and provide a dose of starry relief. The Orionid meteor shower is still active with reports of up to 25 meteors per hour. I see from the Clear Sky Clock that clear skies are forecast for tomorrow morning beginning around 4 a.m. Still up for some meteor watching?

We look forward to another week of International Space Station passes in the morning sky. Here are viewing times for the region, but if you’re outside the area just click here and put in your zipcode for times for your town.

* Saturday Oct. 24 beginning at 7:05 a.m. This pass, which starts in the northwestern sky, will be one of the brightest of the week ahead. Near its end, the ISS will cruise near Venus in the east.
* Sunday Oct. 25 starting at 5:56 a.m. in the northwest
* Monday Oct. 26 a brilliant one starting at 6:19 a.m. in the northwest. At about 6:23, the ISS will pass just to the right of Saturn low in the eastern sky — a very convenient way to find the planet!
* Tuesday Oct. 27 starting at 6:42 a.m. Another bright one. The ISS will pass extremely close to Betelgeuse in Orion just before 6:44.
* Wednesday Oct. 28 at 7:04 a.m. Low pass across the southern sky.
* Thursday Oct. 29 at 5:56 a.m. Brief pass in south-southeast.
* Friday Oct. 30 at 6:19 a.m. Brief, low pass in the south.

Perseus holds the head of Medusa the Gorgon and flys to Andromeda’s rescue with the help of those little wings on his sandals — an ancient version of the jetpack. The star Algol marks the left eye of Medusa. Its Arabic name means "head of the ogre or ghoul" and its nickname is the Demon Star. Algol’s been considered an "unlucky star" for centuries, possibly because of its periodic fadings. Credit: Urania’s Mirror / William Jamieson

I’ve been teasing you the past week or two by highlighting particular areas in the constellation of Perseus the Hero like the Alpha Persei Association and the variable star Algol but haven’t yet properly introduced the possessor of these sky wonders. Perseus is the hero of Greek mythology who slayed Medusa, one of the evil Gorgons. Medusa lived in a cave with her two other sisters and had hair so in need of a good conditioner that it writhed with snakes. Gazing at Medusa’s face was said to turn one to stone. Perseus successfully lopped off her head by using her reflection in his shield rather than gazing directly at her.

He next rescued Andromeda, daughter of Queen Cassiopeia and King Cepheus, from being eaten alive by the whate Cetus. Cassiopeia had bragged about her beauty and angered the god Poseidon, who sent the whale to ravage the king and queen’s realm. Soon after, Perseus and Andromeda were married, and the whole family — Perseus, Andromeda, Cassiopeia and Cepheus — remain in the sky to this day recalling the ancient myth. Cetus is there too but further south. We’ll take a closer look at him next month.

This map shows the sky as you look northeast around 9 o’clock local time. Use the familiar W or zigzag of Cassiopeia to help get you Perseus. Except for Mirfak and Algol, the constellation is formed of fainter stars. Maps created with Stellarium.

Perseus is larger and fainter than nearby Cassiopeia. To the south it’s bounded by the Pleiades star cluster, to the east by the bright star Capella. Drop one Cassiopeia length below Cassiopeia to take you to the "fishhook" figure containing Perseus’ brightest star Mirfak. Once you find that, look to the right to see two dangly chains of stars that form his arm and one of his legs. Perseus is up by 8 o’clock but best from 9 onward as it rises ever higher in the northeastern sky.

Another view of Perseus with stars labeled so you can better see Medusa’s and our hero’s outline.