Tuesday 01-10-2019 - 15:49

Welcome back to the new year, hope you had a good summer! This month we start Astronomy Society with a bang - almost literally (more on that later), but for now we will give the highlights and how to spot them yourselves at home.

• Thursday 3rd: The Moon and Jupiter are very close together in the sky rising in the evening - see if you can spot Jupiter's Moons through some binoculars or a small telescope. And if you get a picture using your mobile phone of the pair send them to us on Twitter @lancasterastro
• Saturday 5th: Saturn and the Moon are close in the sky today also. With a small scope or binoculars you can easily see the rings of Saturn. Again, send us picture of the pair in the sky!
• Wednesday 9th: Early morning is the peak of the Draconid meteor shower - with an expected rate of up to 20 meteors per hour! They radiate from the constellation of Draco in the north. Look 90 degrees to either side to see the longest trails. It is best to lie down and look up at the sky to avoid strain on your neck. 
• Monday 21st: Tonight is the peak of the Orionid meteor shower, again expect up to 20 meteors per hour. This time it is better in the evening, but a 50% lit Moon will make it difficult to see most meteors.
• Thursday 24th: This is the interesting one. Between 3.30pm and 5.30pm you can see two of Jupiter's moons cast shadows on the disc of the gas giant. But it's going to be very hard to locate Jupiter - LUAstro are going to attempt to image this, though we do not expect great success. Our images will be up on the Twitter @lancasterastro within the day

ISS passings in Lancaster occur early in the month and in the evening. Some of the better sightings are:

• 3rd October, 7.34pm - 4 mins
• 5th October, 7.34pm - 4 mins

All sightings start roughly west, passing across to east. There are more sightings than this, but these last the longest. We can only list sightings up to 10th October at the time of writing, but later on in the month you can find out more here. To photograph the ISS is very difficult, but is achieveable- a couple of LUAstro exec will be attempting this in our own time. At home you can photograph it a different way by installing a long exposure camera app and leaving your phone still until it has passed - photos look better if there is something in the foreground also. Your final result will be a single trail crossing the sky in front of the stars in the back, which will seem like they have not moved.

So these are the best highlights - do please try and image the pairings of Jupiter, the Moon, and Saturn early in the month if the weather favours - we'd love to see your photos!