The 365 Days of Astronomy

• Actual Astronomy - Observer’s Calendar For October

  Hosted by Chris Beckett & Shane Ludtke, two amateur astronomers in Saskatchewan. [email protected] The Actual Astronomy Podcast presents Episode 502: The Observer’s Calendar for October 2025. In this episode we talk about a long list of observing events from Carbon stars to many shadow transits of the Moon of Jupiter. Don’t miss the Orionid meteor shower and catch Saturn with its rings edge on! We also discuss some stars and deep sky objects and two bright comets coming our way!   Oct 1 - Monday Oct 1 - Carbon Star FU Mon is at it’s best tonight Oct 2 - Minor Planet Ceres is at opposition at m-7.6 Oct 4 & 5th - Double Shadow Transit on Jupiter. 12:49am and 7:03pm EST. Oct 6th - Full Moon as Saturn, Neptune and Moon congregate in late evening sky Oct 7th - Full Moon today but try and Follow Sirius with your unaided eye into the daylight  sky this week and see if you can ferret Vega out before sunset. Double shadow transit? Oct 9th Endymion sunset rays visible on Moon Oct 10 - South Taurid Meteor shower in pre-dawn sky - ZHR = 5 to 10 Oct 11 - Double Shadow Transit on Jupiter 2:42 am est. Oct 12 - Jupiter 4-degrees S. Of Moon & another Jupiter double shadow transit at 9:11pm & Zodiacal light becomes visible this week! Oct 13 - Last Quarter Moon & Carbon Star RT Capricornus best tonight Oct 14 - Variable star T Cephei at max mag. 5.2 this evening Oct 15 - Saturn ring tile of -1.01-degrees! Oct 16 - Moon occults Regulus 1pm est - We miss it Oct 18 - Double Shadow transit on Jupiter Oct 20 - Mercury 2-degrees S of Mars (conjunction) Double Shadow transit on Jupiter Carbon Star RZ Pegasai at it’s best tonight Oct 21 - New moon & Orionid Meteor Shower peaks with ZHR of 20 in predawn hours - These meteors originate from Comet Halley, 1 part of stream..second part in Aquarids of May - Also, another double shadow transit on Jupiter Oct 22 - Gegenschein visible from dark skies, high in S at midnight Oct 23 - NGC 1269 well placed for those much farther south of 50-N Oct 24 - Carbon star S Scuti at it’s best tonight Oct 25 2 more Shadows on Jupiter 7:18pm - Saturn ring tilt closes to -0.72-degrees Oct 26 Carbon Star UV Aquili best tonight Oct 27 - NGCs 55, 247 & 300 well placed in south late in the evening Oct 28 - Lunar X visible near crater Werner - Another double shadow transit on Jupiter Oct 29 - First Quarter Moon & Mercury at greatest elongation in evening sky - LOW - Lunar Straight wall visible this evening Oct 30 Jeweled Handle visible on Moon From AI- The Jeweled Handle (or Golden Handle) on the Moon is a clair-obscur effect where the peaks of the Montes Jura mountain range, bordering the Sinus Iridum (Bay of Rainbows), are illuminated by the rising sun at lunar dawn. This creates the illusion of a "handle" formed by bright, curved mountain peaks against the shadowed basin of the Sinus Iridum.  Look out for: Comet C2025 R2 SWAN  C/2025 A6 Lemmon   We've added a new way to donate to 365 Days of Astronomy to support editing, hosting, and production costs.  Just visit: https://www.patreon.com/365DaysOfAstronomy and donate as much as you can! Share the podcast with your friends and send the Patreon link to them too!  Every bit helps! Thank you! ------------------------------------ Do go visit http://www.redbubble.com/people/CosmoQuestX/shop for cool Astronomy Cast and CosmoQuest t-shirts, coffee mugs and other awesomeness! http://cosmoquest.org/Donate This show is made possible through your donations.  Thank you! (Haven't donated? It's not too late! Just click!) ------------------------------------ The 365 Days of Astronomy Podcast is produced by the Planetary Science Institute. http://www.psi.edu Visit us on the web at 365DaysOfAstronomy.org or email us at [email protected].

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• Guide To Space - Can There Be Life On Planets Around Red Dwarf Stars?

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkPhmtJRvsM From  Jan 24, 2019. As astronomers find more and more planets around other stars, the big question we want to know is: are they habitable, could there be life there?   The vast majority of stars in the Milky Way are red dwarf stars, and most of the planets in habitable zones have been found orbiting these cooler, less massive stars. What are the chances that life could get going on these worlds?   We've added a new way to donate to 365 Days of Astronomy to support editing, hosting, and production costs.  Just visit: https://www.patreon.com/365DaysOfAstronomy and donate as much as you can! Share the podcast with your friends and send the Patreon link to them too!  Every bit helps! Thank you! ------------------------------------ Do go visit http://www.redbubble.com/people/CosmoQuestX/shop for cool Astronomy Cast and CosmoQuest t-shirts, coffee mugs and other awesomeness! http://cosmoquest.org/Donate This show is made possible through your donations.  Thank you! (Haven't donated? It's not too late! Just click!) ------------------------------------ The 365 Days of Astronomy Podcast is produced by the Planetary Science Institute. http://www.psi.edu Visit us on the web at 365DaysOfAstronomy.org or email us at [email protected].

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• Space Stories - Parallax: Measuring the Cosmos

  Hosted by Richard Drumm, our Editor. The word of the day today is parallax! Specifically stellar parallax. So what’s parallax & what does it mean to astronomers? As it happens, I was part of the UVA Parallax team in the early 1980s. Best part-time job ever! So for once I might know a little bit about what I’m talking about! I’ll do my best to describe it so you can understand the science.   An easy method to help grasp the concept is for you to hold out your thumb at arm’s length and close one eye, then the other, switching back & forth between them while looking at your thumb. The location of your thumb seems to shift with each eye’s view. If your, uh, thumb was 20 feet away from your eye, the shift would be much less. You can measure the baseline, the distance between your eyes and, using a little trigonometry calculate the distance to your thumb. Simple!    We've added a new way to donate to 365 Days of Astronomy to support editing, hosting, and production costs.  Just visit: https://www.patreon.com/365DaysOfAstronomy and donate as much as you can! Share the podcast with your friends and send the Patreon link to them too!  Every bit helps! Thank you! ------------------------------------ Do go visit http://www.redbubble.com/people/CosmoQuestX/shop for cool Astronomy Cast and CosmoQuest t-shirts, coffee mugs and other awesomeness! http://cosmoquest.org/Donate This show is made possible through your donations.  Thank you! (Haven't donated? It's not too late! Just click!) ------------------------------------ The 365 Days of Astronomy Podcast is produced by the Planetary Science Institute. http://www.psi.edu Visit us on the web at 365DaysOfAstronomy.org or email us at [email protected].

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• Astronomy Cast Ep. 765: Rockets vs The Environment

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NupNyOy4-0 Streamed live on Sep 22, 2025. We don’t launch a lot of rockets every year, so their impact on the environment is minimal compared to other forms of transportation. But that number is steadily increasing with rates that we’ll have to take seriously. What’s the current and future impact of rockets on the environment Rocket facilities are often surrounded by wildlife preserves and they always fly through our atmosphere. Let's take a look at how launches do and don't impact the environment around them from the surface of Earth, to the farthest orbits (and landings).    We've added a new way to donate to 365 Days of Astronomy to support editing, hosting, and production costs.  Just visit: https://www.patreon.com/365DaysOfAstronomy and donate as much as you can! Share the podcast with your friends and send the Patreon link to them too!  Every bit helps! Thank you! ------------------------------------ Do go visit http://www.redbubble.com/people/CosmoQuestX/shop for cool Astronomy Cast and CosmoQuest t-shirts, coffee mugs and other awesomeness! http://cosmoquest.org/Donate This show is made possible through your donations.  Thank you! (Haven't donated? It's not too late! Just click!) ------------------------------------ The 365 Days of Astronomy Podcast is produced by the Planetary Science Institute. http://www.psi.edu Visit us on the web at 365DaysOfAstronomy.org or email us at [email protected].

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• Travelers in the Night Eps. 335E & 336E: Returnee & 2 Suns

  Dr. Al Grauer hosts. Dr. Albert D. Grauer ( @Nmcanopus ) is an observational asteroid hunting astronomer. Dr. Grauer retired from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock in 2006. travelersinthenight.org From May 2025. Today's 2 topics: - On May 5, 2014 when I discovered 2014 JO25 with the Catalina Sky Survey's 60 inch telescope on Mt. Lemmon, Arizona it was the brightest, fastest asteroid I had ever seen. In April of 2017, 2014 JO25 returned to come within 1.1 million miles of us at 21 mi/s. This rare, very close approach by an asteroid, of 2014 JO25's size allowed scientists at NASA's Goldstone Solar System Radar in California and the National Science Foundation's Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico to obtain radar images of it.    - The NASA Kepler Spacecraft has discovered more than 2,000 planets which have been confirmed to be orbiting distant stars. It performs this remarkable feat by imaging more than 145,000 stars simultaneously to observe and measure the tiny dips in light which occur as a planet passes in front of its star. Astronomers have long known that many of the solar systems in the Milky Way have more than one star.    We've added a new way to donate to 365 Days of Astronomy to support editing, hosting, and production costs.  Just visit: https://www.patreon.com/365DaysOfAstronomy and donate as much as you can! Share the podcast with your friends and send the Patreon link to them too!  Every bit helps! Thank you! ------------------------------------ Do go visit http://www.redbubble.com/people/CosmoQuestX/shop for cool Astronomy Cast and CosmoQuest t-shirts, coffee mugs and other awesomeness! http://cosmoquest.org/Donate This show is made possible through your donations.  Thank you! (Haven't donated? It's not too late! Just click!) ------------------------------------ The 365 Days of Astronomy Podcast is produced by the Planetary Science Institute. http://www.psi.edu Visit us on the web at 365DaysOfAstronomy.org or email us at [email protected].

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