An Easter Egg Hunt and a near miss

First off, sorry about the cosmic "Easter Egg Hunt" I sent you on last week. Those objects can be seen in the early evening December sky--but it is colder in December, so save last week's column and check them out then.

The Parade of Planets is still visible in the early evening sky, even though one (Jupiter) has slipped into the early morning sky.

Start looking above the southwestern horizon about an hour after local sunset. Bright Venus is impossible to miss. Now is a good time to start tracking Venus as it moves evening by evening toward a close conjunction with Saturn and Antares on October 27.

The next parade entry is the ringed planet Saturn. Swing your view east to just above Scorpius where Saturn and Mars had a nice meeting in August.

Speaking of Mars, it is the third, and final, entry in our evening parade. Swing your view further eastward for the bright, reddish dot located in the Tea Pot of Sagittarius. Incidentally, this is a good place to re-visit some of the objects we have seen earlier.

Put Mars in the center of your binocular FOV and the Sagittarius cluster (M22) will be at about 2:00 position. Swing one FOV westward to find M8, the Lagoon Nebula, and M20, the Trifid Nebula in the same FOV.

Incidentally, both of them are great telescopic objects.

If you would like to see Jupiter, be up and out looking east about a half-hour before local sunrise. Jupiter will be a bright dot just about on the horizon. If you are out tomorrow morning (October 13) with your binoculars you might catch tiny Mercury just below giant Jupiter.

Now, since you are going to be out looking for Jupiter, why not make it a couple of hours earlier and look for something really interesting, the false dawn.

For the first few weeks after the autumnal equinox, we have an opportunity to observe an elusive phenomenon called the "false dawn" a more commonly named as the zodiacal light.

It is so called because it lines up with the ecliptic, the path the Sun, moon and planets seem to follow.

Very dark skies are needed to view it. It is caused by sunlight reflected off the bazillion bits of dust floating around in the galactic plane (ecliptic).

In autumn it is seen in the morning sky up to two hours before local sunrise and will seem to be a fuzzy Milk Way-like glow above the eastern horizon where the Sun will rise. There is a counterpart near the spring equinox, but that is visible in the evening.

SKY WATCH: Full moon, Saturday, Oct. 15. Okay troops, you are not going to want to miss this one. Tuesday, Oct. 18, drag your binoculars or better yet, a telescope outside by 11:15 pm MDT. Look east for the just-past-full moon located above our old friend Orion. The moon is right in the middle of the horns of Taurus, the Bull, and will be about to occult the star Aldebaran ... barely. This occultation will be an almost near-miss covering of the star.

The upper edge of the moon will cover the star beginning about 11:33 pm MDT (at least in southwest Nebraska) and it will emerge from the opposite edge at about 11:52 pm MDT. For my friends in Denver and further west, sorry but the moon will completely miss Aldebaran in this passing--but it will be a very close miss, which still will be worth watching.

NEXT WEEK: More things to look at and more astronomical blathering.