Saturday October 31 is Hallowe’en, but the evening may not be much fun. Trick-or-treating,if any, will be inhibited by terror of the virus, a wicked witch if ever there was one. Creative tricksters may use their face masks to scary effect; those with bad taste may stud their heads with coronae.
The only celestial event for the occasion is that the remote planet Uranus skulks in the depth of the night, that is, is at opposition – the planet that tricks us by being on the verge of visibility, pretending sometimes to be a star, a star that isn’t there at a later look. (It was mapped as a star in several different places before being discovered as a planet in 1781.)
And, as if Uranus wasn’t already difficult to see, the Moon is Full and therefore in almost the same place, and 19 million times brighter. (The astronomical “magnitudes” or Full Moon and opposition Uranus are -12.5 and +5.7, each magnitude step being a factor of about 2.5 in luminosity.)
I show Uranus and the Moon coming up into view on the night previous to Halloween. since by the next night they will have passed each other.
See the end note about enlarging illustrations.
The “anti-Sun” is the point opposite to the Sun (where eclipses happen if the Moon happens to be there). The point travels constantly eastward (leftward) as the Sun does. You can see that Uranus is about to pass this point westward, and the Moon (shown at twice size) eastward.
The Moon will be exactly Full 15 hours after the picture time – at 15h Universal Time, in the daylight of October 31. And only an hour after that, almost simultaneously, Uranus will be at opposition and the Moon will pass 3° south of it.
Maybe you could find some lugubrious Halloween fun by imagining Uranus as the timid householder (trying to hide in Earth’s shadow) and the Moon as the rowdy pumpkin-faced trick-or-treater blustering by along Ecliptic Street.
(Oh, that’s contrary to my first trope, of trickster Uranus. Take your pick.)
Uranus is not the most popular of planets. There’s plenty about its slightly spooky character in our book Uranus, Neptune, Pluto
The clock time of our picture is still Central Daylight-Shifted Time because it’s another night later, November 1, that American clocks get restored to natural time. Revisit my polemic about this by clicking the “Astronomical Calendar Any-Year” tab at the top and scrolling down to “Clock shifting times.”
The gate in the photo at the end of that page isn’t a kissing gate, as I said when talking about the European clock change a few days ago. It’s what I might dub a double-F gate, intended to bar cars and slow cyclists.
Double-F gates are frequent around here, since cyclists are. This one is just inside the little-known Duchess’s Gate into Syon Park. The true kissing gate is common in the countryside of Dorset. It is a fixed V-shape or C-shape within which a gate swings, so that cattle can’t go through.
As your companion goes in one direction, you are going close by in the other direction. With an opportunity more proper for Valentine’s Day than for Hallowe’en,
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ILLUSTRATIONS in these posts are made with precision but have to be inserted in another format. You may be able to enlarge them on your monitor. One way: right-click, and choose “View image”, then enlarge. Or choose “Copy image”, then put it on your desktop, then open it. On an iPad or phone, use the finger gesture that enlarges (spreading with two fingers, or tapping and dragging with three fingers). Other methods have been suggested, such as dragging the image to the desktop and opening it in other ways.
Sometimes I make improvements or corrections to a post after positing it. If you click on the title, rather than on ‘Read more’, I think you are sure to see the latest version.
This weblog maintains its right to be about astronomy or anything under the sun.
I just had a thought about how to keep the clocks a little more honest during daylight saving time, especially if we follow the completely wrong-headed scheme to go to year-round daylight saving time: set the clock hands forward an hour for daylight saving time, then rotate the whole clock backwards an hour, so that 1 o’clock is at the top and 7 o’clock is at the bottom.
Good idea. A fuller solution, though costing something, would be for someone to make clocks that have concentric circles: an inner one with shifted time, and an outer one with stanrdard time.
I like my idea better. It’s simpler and clearer. It keeps noon at midday and midnight at midnight, regardless of the numbers assigned to the different hours. I imagine it would be a good conversation starter with people who have not thought about the pros and cons of daylight saving time.
I have seen clocks with two faces on them but to accommodate the 24hr clock.they have 12 hrs around the top an the inner face to 0000hrs or 24hr as it’s sometimes known.obviously you’d have to know if it was morning or afternoon for such a clock to be useful but then with the 12hr clock you have to know if it’s am or pm.
Surely they have 12 at the top, for the Sun at noon, and 0=24 at the bottom, for the Sun at its lowest at midnight. I think that’s the rational kind of clock. Its only disadvantage would be its halved scale.
Yes the 24 hour clock is the most rational and logical as I always say to 12 hour clock fans : how many hours in the day 12 or 24 so what makes more sense?the USA, apart from the military, steadfastly stick to the 12 hour clock and it must be the only county on Earth,well the only one I’ve been to and I’ve been to 93!,where and pm is used on airport departure boards.England is a halfway house,when I lived in Oxford there where two main shopping centres and one posted it’s opening times in the 24 hr clock and the other in the 12 hour clock! another strange one was Liverpool based Mersey Travel the public transport authority for Liverpool and the surrounding areas.it displayed bus times using the 12 hr clock and rail times in the 24 hour clock!I never noticed what clock it used for it’s rather limited ferry service.hopefully they have improved but I don’t know as I haven’t been there for about 4 years.
Poor old Uranus often gets missed off the list of naked eye planets and put in the same category as Neptune but infact it’s in the same category as Mercury difficult naked eye planets.the trick is head,if you don’t live in such a place,to the nearest very dark place spy Uranus out with an optical aid such as a pair of binoculars or a monocular then examine the spot naked eye.
At 2235 PDT last night, I was looking at the full Moon and noticed Menkar, alpha Ceti, to the Moon’s lower left. Using 10×42 binoculars I star-hopped to Uranus, which was just over 5 degrees from the Moon, so the Moon was just outside the field of view, but still very bright. At magnitude -12.3 the Moon was about 16 million times brighter than Uranus.
Might be a lot brighter than Uranus but even during a full Moon, unless it’s very near Uranus,you still have no problem seeing it even using weak optical aids.
This full Moon will also be a blue Moon, second full Moon in a calendar month … .
The almost exact conjunction of the full Moon with Uranus at opposition seems like a remarkable coincidence. A hindrance for observers but a field day for astrologers.
It’s not a blue moon for everyone. Those living at far eastern longitudes – central and eastern Australia, PNG, NZ, the Pacific islands, the Vladivostok region of Russia – experience only one full moon in October. They get two full moons in November.
Is there a name for the first of two full Moons in a calendar month? If not, could we call a pre-blue Moon? Rhymes with preview. ;-)
I have just this very day purchased a pair of Helios Starfield 2×40 Ulta wide field binoculars so I shall try for Uranus in them.i can’t tonight as I have to get up early to go to hospital tomorrow although it clouded over anyhow.