The Moon
The Moon In October
We’ve left summer in the rearview mirror and fall (autumn) beckons us with its darker, but not yet freezing, evenings. With more time to enjoy exploring the moon’s surface, let’s see what it has to offer us this month.
October begins with dark skies, the moon is new on the second day of the month and doesn’t begin to impact late evening viewing until the end of the first week. Our neighbor arrives at first quarter on the tenth, when those of us that love crater hunting should have our fingers crossed for clear skies.
The bright orb fattens towards its fullest on the 17th, when the moon is visible all night long and knocking the all but the brightest objects out of our sight.
As the moon wanes towards third quarter on the 24th, it also leaves the evening sky, only rising after midnight by then. And that’s how the situation remains for the rest of the month, with moonless evenings and dark fall skies.
Librations aren’t the best this month. Look for marginal sights of the ‘dark side’ on the evenings of the 16th and 17th.
Moon Name
October’s full moon is known as the Hunter Moon because it’s when our ancestors used to like hunting the winter-ready pray, like deer, that can’t hide in the harvested fields. And, of course, the bright October full moon meant it was easier to see that pray at night too.
In different cultures and religions, it can also be known as the Falling Leaves Moon or the Seed Fall Moon, both for fairly obvious reasons.
Viewing Summary
| Dark Evenings | Dark Mornings | Dark Night | Evening Moon | Morning Moon | Librations |
| 1-6, 23-31 | 2-11, 28-31 | 1-7, 26-31 | 9-20 | 15-25 | 16, 17 |
Moon Phases, Rise & Set Times
Whether you are planning to observe the moon, or you want to make sure to avoid it, use the table below to discover when the moon will be above the horizon this month. The ‘Illumination’ column shows how bright it is going to be – the higher the %, the brighter the moon.
Moon Table Notes
- A=Apogee (furthest approach), P=Perigee (closest approach), FQ=First Quarter, LQ=Last Quarter
- All times are for Kansas City (DST). However, these times will be approximately accurate for your local time zone wherever you are in the northern hemisphere. For example, if you live in London, UK, the moonrise and set times will be no more than an hour different from those shown in the table above.
- There are two moonrise columns in the table, this is because each day is timed from midnight to midnight. On some days in the month the moon is already in the sky at midnight, therefore it sets first before rising again later in the day. On other days, the moon is below the horizon at midnight. On those days it rises first before setting later in the day.
- The data in the table comes from timeanddate.com
Visualization Of The Moon’s Impact
The following chart shows a visualisation of when the moon is above the horizon and below. This should make it easier for you to plan which nights offer the darkest skies and which provide the best opportunity for observing the moon itself.
First & Last Quarter Moon Locations
The two pictures below, from SkySafari 6, show the last and first quarter moons available to us in October.
We’ll see it reach first quarter on 10 October, when the moon will be passing through Sagittarius. First quarter is always best viewed in the evening, when the moon is higher in the sky. The image below shows the moon’s location at 8:00 pm when it will be 23° over the southern horizon.
Last quarter, which is better for lunar gazers outside in the morning, happens on the 24th of October. The second star chart below reveals that the moon is in Cancer that night, not far from the twin stars Castor and Pollux, and 65° above the southeastern horizon at 6:00 am.
Click on the pictures for full screen versions.
Librations
The moon wobbles as it orbits Earth. These wobbles are known as librations and they show us parts of the Moon’s surface which are usually on the ‘dark side’. This means that we can actually see around 59% of the lunar surface over the course of a month. Keen moon watchers look for these librations so they can spy craters not normally visible to us.
The best librations for August occur on the 7th, 8th, 19th, and 20th of the month. Most of these are unremarkable but we’ll see more of the moon’s southeastern edge than usual on the night of the 19th. Learn more about librations here on Love the Night Sky (opens a new tab).
More information on how to read the images is provided at the bottom of this page.
Guide to libration images
Where the two blue lines cross shows the center of the lunar surface when there is no libration. The blue dot shows the center of the Moon’s surface, i.e. where the Earth would appear overhead if you were standing on the lunar surface. The yellow dot (cone) shows where the Sun is overhead.
Use the images above to see where each libration occurs this month and how large it is. Firstly, imagine a line running from the crossed blue lines and through the center of the blue dot. Extend this line on to the edge of the Moon’s surface. Where the line meets the edge is where the libration is most noticeable, this is shown as a red arrowhead in the diagram on the right.
Secondly, to see how large the libration is, note the distance between the crossed blue lines and and the blue dot. This is shown as the double-headed green arrow in the diagram. The larger this distance, the more of the ‘dark side’ of the Moon we can see.
The images above are generated on this NASA website.
