Why Hallmark gets it wrong

As much as the good folks who print greeting cards would like for us to believe it, there is not always a full moon on Halloween. Take a stroll through any greeting card aisle -- as I did recently -- and you will see depictions of smiling witches riding their brooms across the face of a full moon.

Or there could be a full moon rising behind a row of tombstones with smiling ghosts, skeletons, and other equally spooky critters flying around wishing you a Happy Halloween.

As my grandfather used to say, 'Taint so.

In fact, the next time the moon will be full on Halloween is the year 2020. With only two exceptions since 1925, the full moon rising on Halloween averages about 19 years apart.

So, attaching a full moon to various haunting, spooky, or eerie happenings isn't astronomically correct.

There are, however, other spooky astronomical happening in the sky on Halloween. Take for example what Jack Horkheimer, former host of the PBS program Star Gazer, used to call the "Seven Sinister Sisters," when referring to the Pleiades star cluster.

Many ancient cultures associated great calamities occurring when the Pleiades were overhead at midnight in late October, such as the great flood in the Bible, the sinking of Atlantis, or even the possibility of the end of the world.

The Aztec and Mayan cultures believed that when the Pleiades were overhead at midnight it was a signal that the world might come to an end. For other cultures it signaled a time to honor the dead from which we now have Dia de los Muertos, Day of the Dead, celebrations honoring family members and others who have died.

The Pleiades are no longer directly overhead at midnight, that happens at about 2 a.m. MDT, but the little cluster is still very high in the sky these crisp October evenings.

They rise in the east at about 8 p.m. MDT and ride the shoulder of Taurus, the Bull, up to very high in the southeastern sky by midnight. Orion, the Hunter is below them, above the horizon by then and his belt is pointing almost straight up right at them.

In other astronomical happenings, there will be two planet/star conjunctions in the coming days, one in the early evening and one in the early morning.

On the evening of Monday, Nov. 3, the planet Mars will be scooting up close to the star that marks the very top of the lid of the Tea Pot asterism, otherwise known as Sagittarius, the Archer.

About an hour after local sunset take your binoculars out and look low in the southwest. Find the bright dot that is Mars then locate the star just below it, that is Kaus Borealis, the top star of the Tea Pot's lid. In the same view is a nice little globular star cluster, M28

But don't stop there.

Just to the right of Mars, about five degrees, is the spectacular M8, the Lagoon Nebula, and up and right at about the 2 o'clock position is the equally beautiful M20, the Trifid Nebula. The pair are almost, but not quite, in the same binocular field of view with Mars.

Now, Tuesday morning, Nov. 4, be up early at least 45-minutes before local sunrise looking southeast for the planet Mercury.

It will be very, very low on the horizon. To its right at about the 4 o'clock position is the bright star Spica.

They both will be in the same binocular field of view.

SKYWATCH: First-quarter moon, Thursday, Oct. 30 -- see, no full moon on Halloween. Don't forget to change your clock back one hour on Saturday night, Nov. 1.

NEXT WEEK: More astronomical blathering.