Autumn, Winter and Spring are the best time of year for stargazing. The clearest time for the Pacific Northwest is around July; for the Midwest, August; for the Great Plains, it appears to run from July through October.
Stargazing is an all year activity that rewards you with superb sky sights. On the off chance that you watch the night sky throughout a year, you’ll see that what’s up there changes gradually from month to month. Similar objects that are up promptly at night in January are all the more effectively noticeable later around evening time a couple of months after that. There are a few factors that will influence your stargazing knowledge. Here we share clues and tips on the most proficient method to make your stargazing trip advantageous and help you pick when the best time to go stargazing is.
Table of Contents
Moonlight.
Normal moonlight washes out the light from most stars leaving just the most brilliant ones noticeable. This is most noticeable around the season of full moon — when the moon is at its most splendid just a couple of stars can be seen. The time amid full moon is consequently the most awful time to stargaze — at this time even dark sky sites which are free from man-made light pollution are no darker than a city centre!
The best time to go stargazing is the days before, during and soon after each new moon.
Amid this time the moon isn’t visible in the sky and subsequently does not wash out the light from fainter stars. You will most likely observe a large number of stars with simply your bare eye contrasted with a couple of hundred at other occasions. Going to a dull sky site free of light contamination is beneficial as the Milky Way will be effectively unmistakable angling over the sky (contingent upon the season and time of night). You will likewise have obviously better perspectives on fainter objects, for example, cosmic systems, nebulae and star groups when utilizing a telescope during a new moon period.
If you want to see star-filled skies simply avoiding times around full moon will mean you see more. All this being said the moon does look awesome through a telescope — however you don’t need to travel to somewhere dark to appreciate that!
Summer twilight.
Summer months mean long days and brief evenings and essentially decreases stargazing openings. The long periods of morning and night nightfall are longer amid the mid-year. The skies take more time to get dim after nightfall and get lighter early before dawn. This leaves just a brief period in the middle to see dim skies — around the summer solstice (the longest day) it barely gets dim by any means!
Observing season.
Fall, winter and spring offer the best occasions to stargaze and numerous space experts allude to it as a ‘watching season’. You will discover most stargazing occasions being held amid this period — indeed many non-commercial observatories stay closed during the summer months as it simply doesn’t get dark at the time the public are able to visit.
When it’s ideal to observe.
What month is the most clear of the year for stargazing? The clearest time for the Pacific Northwest is around July; for the Midwest, August; for the Great Plains, it appears to run from July through October. However, the most striking example is in the vast area from New England, south and west into the Gulf States and Texas, where long haul climatological records demonstrate that October is by a wide margin the clearest month of the year.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJamM96tJIg
In New York City, for instance, October ordinarily has 12 sunny mornings, more than in some other month in that area. Easterners can thank high-pressure systems, which relocate from the west and will in general slowdown and spread out amid October in the region of West Virginia.
Other than the lucidity of the sky, an absence of fog prompts straightforward perspectives. This gives us a glimpse of those faint stars near the threshold of naked-eye visibility that can make October nights so stunning. Solid cold fronts intermittently dropping south out of Canada regularly scrub the air, with showery downpours going in front of them and fresh, dry, clean air following behind them, bringing a couple of long periods of great transparency.
For sure, as opposed to the cloudy skies generally associated with late summer, we are presently treated to days when the sky shows up a more profound shade of blue and evenings with probably the best observing of the year.
Enjoying both summer and winter sights.
It is best for stargazers to observe the skies in the month of October for multiple reasons. The ambient evening atmospheric temperatures are agreeable and although a few evenings may be a bit on the chilly side, however simply think ahead a month or two and envision attempting to see in close or sub-freezing conditions.
In addition, October gives you the best of both summer and winter skies.
Directly after nightfall, we still have an excellent view of the summer Milky Way stretching from nearly overhead, down toward the southwest horizon. With binoculars, we can clear through the sparkling star fields in Cygnus, the swan, right down to the amazing star clouds around the focal point of our cosmic system in Sagittarius, the archer.
Furthermore, in case you’re up before the break of first light, you can appreciate a view of the midwinter sky, with Orion, the seeker, and his splendid entourage of Taurus, the bull; Gemini, the twins; and such twinklers as blue-white Sirius, the most splendid of all stars, the yellow-white Capella, sparkling from a point straightforwardly overhead.
Look at the delightful Pleiades and Hyades star bunches with binoculars, or look to what many believe is the masterpiece of the sky, the Great Orion Nebula, a tremendous vaporous cloud that is frequently depicted in stargazing guides as a standout amongst the most magnificent telescopic objects in the sky.
On the off chance that this isn’t sufficient motivation for you to clean off your telescope and get out to do a bunch of stargazing, you need to just observe what happens once we progress from October into November.
What to observe in October.
There’s a galaxy out there you can spot with the exposed eye (from a decent dull sky site), and it’s known as the Andromeda Galaxy. At 2.5 million light-years away, it’s the most far off thing you can see with your naked eye. To discover it, you have to find two constellations — Cassiopeia and Pegasus. Cassiopeia resembles a squashed number 3, and Pegasus is set apart by a monster box shape of stars. There is a line of stars coming from one corner of the square of Pegasus.
Those mark the constellation Andromeda. Follow that line out past one dim star and then a bright one. At the bright one, turn to the north past two little stars. Andromeda Galaxy should show up as a faint smudge of light between those two stars and Cassiopeia.
If you live in a city or near bright lights, this one is quite a bit more difficult to find. But, give it a try. What’s more, on the off chance that you can’t discover it, type “Andromeda Galaxy” into your most loved internet search engine to discover extraordinary pictures of it on the web!
Another great meteor shower.
October is the month when the Orionid meteors come join the party. This meteor shower crests around the 21st of the month yet really happens from October 2 to November 7. Meteor showers happen when Earth happens to pass through the stream of material left along a comet (or asteroid’s) orbit.
The Orionids are related with the most renowned comet of all, Comet 1P/Halley. The actual meteors are the flashes of light that occur when a tiny piece of cometary or asteroid debris streaks down from space and is vaporized by friction as it passes through gases in our atmosphere.
The radiant of the meteor shower — that is, the point in the sky from where the meteors seem to come — is in the constellation Orion, and that is the reason this shower is known as the Orionids. The shower can top at around 20 meteors for each hour and some years there are more. The best time to see them is between midnight & dawn.
Stargazing in November.
When we move into November, we enter an extended spell of overcast spread.
As indicated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s local climatological information for the United States, the cloudiest month falls between November and May for 98 percent of climate stations tested.
Put another way, from November through April, about 25 to 35 percent of the United States sees in excess of 70 percent cloud inclusion in different months. Conversely, in October, just little parts of Maine and the Pacific Northwest persevere through such conditions.
What to observe in November.
The Little Eyes of the Heavens.
The Pleiades are one of the loveliest little star clusters to be found in the night sky. They’re a piece of the constellation Taurus.The stars of the Pleiades are an open group that lies around 400 light-years away. It shows up in the night skies from late November to through March every year. In November, they’re up from sunset to sunrise and have been seen by each culture the world over.
The Eye of the Medusa.
Not far away in the sky is the constellation Perseus. In folklore, Perseus was a saint and he saved the stunning Andromeda from the grip of an ocean beast. He did this by waving around the severed head of a monster called the Medusa, which made the beast turn to stone. The Medusa had a gleaming red eye which the Greeks related with the star Algol in Perseus.
What Algol really is.
Algol appears to “wink” in brilliance each 2.86 days. It turns out there are two stars there. They spin around one another each 2.86 days. When one star “overshadows” the other, it makes Algol look dimmer. At that point, as that star moves crosswise over and far from the substance of the more brilliant one, it lights up. This makes Algol a sort of variable star.
To discover Algol, search for W-shaped Cassiopeia and after that look directly underneath it. Algol is on a bended “arm” swooping far from the primary body of the constellation.
What else is there?
While you’re in the area of Algol and the Pleiades, look at the Hyades. It’s another star cluster not a long way from the Pleiades. They’re both in the constellation Taurus, the Bull. Taurus itself appears to interface with another star design called Auriga, which is generally rectangular in shape. The splendid star Capella is its brightest member
The disadvantages of October.
As a last note, in any case, we should call attention to that in certain years, October can be horrible to stargazers.
Unfortunately, those very same cells of “fair-weather” high pressure that prevail amid late-summer in the East can now and then work agianstskywatchers. These fronts also tend to produce light winds, which, combined with the waning level of solar radiation coming to Earth, sometimes create what is known as a “temperature inversion.” At such occasions, a layer of dormant warm air aloft puts a powerful lid over the environment’s lower layers, counteracting human-made pollutants from venting upward in the typical way.
This results in a layer of brown haze that thickens in the late-night and early morning hours. Simply such an October climate design happened 53 years back, sadly blocking predawn onservations for most spectators east of the Mississippi when the fantastic Comet Ikeya-Seki showed up. Incidentally, this was the most splendid comet of the twentieth century.
Related questions.
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What is the best time at night to observe the sky?
During April and May the pre-dawn hours are best. From June to early August the best time is near midnight, though the Milky Way will be visible almost all night. From Mid-August through September the best time is soon after the sun has set and the sky has grown dark.
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Can you see Andromeda from the Earth?
The Andromeda Galaxy is the most distant object you can see with your naked eyes, two million light years away. It is visible as a dim, fuzzy star from a dark sky site. With binoculars you can clearly see the elliptical shape of the galaxy.