The Evening Sky in October 2025
Mercury moves up the western sky through the month, the brightest ‘star’ in that region. It will be alongside Mars around the 20th. Mars is reddish and much fainter than Mercury. By the end of October, Mercury is setting around 10 p.m. NZDT. Both planets are tiny in a telescope. Mars is on the far side of the Sun from us, 360 million km away. Mercury is swinging around from the far side of the Sun and catching us up. It is 170 million km away mid-month. The Moon appears near them on the 23rd.
Saturn appears midway up the northeast sky in the evening and is due north by midnight. It looks like a lone, medium-bright star with a cream tint. In low-powered telescopes Saturn appears as a ball with a spike through it. The ring is nearly edge-on so appears as a broad line. Larger telescopes show the ring and Saturn's biggest moon, Titan, looking like a star near the planet. Titan and the smaller moons of Saturn appear in line with the edge-on ring. Saturn is 1290 million km away mid-month. The moon will be near Saturn on the 5th and 6th.
The brightest true stars are low in the north and south. Canopus is low in the southeast at dusk, often twinkling colourfully. It swings up into the eastern sky during the night. On the north skyline is Vega, setting in the early evening. Places in the north of Aotearoa NZ will see Deneb near the north skyline in the middle of the Milky Way. Deneb is the brightest star in the cross-shaped constellation of Cygnus the swan. It is one of the most distant stars visible to the naked eye, around 2600 light-years* away. Its brightness is uncertain because of the distance uncertainty but it could be 200 000 times the Sun's luminosity. Orange Antares is midway down the western sky. It marks the body of the Scorpion. The Scorpion's tail loops up the sky, making a back-to-front question mark with Antares being the dot. The curved tail is the 'fish-hook of Maui' in some Māori star lore. Above and right of the Scorpion's tail is 'the teapot' made by the brightest stars of Sagittarius. It is upside down in our southern hemisphere view.
In the southwest are 'The Pointers ', Beta and Alpha Centauri, making a vertical pair. They point down to Crux the Southern Cross. Alpha Centauri, the top Pointer, is the closest naked eye star at 4.3 light-years away. Beta Centauri is a blue-giant star, very hot and very luminous, hundreds of light-years away.
The Milky Way is brightest and broadest in Scorpius and Sagittarius. In a dark sky it can be traced down to the south. In the north it meets the skyline right of Vega. The Milky Way is our edgewise view of the galaxy, the pancake of billions of stars of which the Sun is just one. The thick hub of the galaxy, 27 000 light-years away, is in Sagittarius. The actual centre, with a black hole four million times the sun's mass, is hidden by dust clouds in space. Its direction is a little outside the Teapot's spout. The dust clouds appear as gaps and slots in the Milky Way. A scan along the Milky Way with binoculars shows many clusters of stars and some glowing clouds of left-over gas. There are many in Scorpius and Sagittarius and in the Carina region below Crux.
The Large and Small Clouds of Magellan, LMC and SMC, look like two misty patches of light in the southeast sky above Canopus. They are easily seen by eye on a dark moonless night. They are galaxies like our Milky Way but much smaller. The LMC is around 160 000 l.y. away; the SMC around 200 000 l.y. away.
On moonless evenings in a dark rural sky the Zodiacal Light is visible in the west. It looks like late twilight: a faint broad column of light enclosing Mercury and Mars and reaching up toward Antares, fading out at the Milky Way. It is sunlight reflecting off meteoric dust in the plane of the solar system.
Jupiter is the brightest ‘star’ in the morning hours. It rises in the northeast around 3:30 a.m. at the beginning of the month and 1:40 at the end. It shines with a steady golden light. The Moon will be near Jupiter on the 14th. From places with a low eastern skyline, brilliant Venus might be seen rising in the dawn twilight around 6 a.m. at the beginning of the month and 5:30 at the end. Venus is on the far side of the Sun from us; 235 million km away mid-month. A very thin crescent Moon will be near Venus on the 20th.
*A light-year (l.y.) is the distance that light travels in one year: nearly 10 million million km or 10^13 km. Sunlight takes eight minutes to get here; moonlight about one second. Sunlight reaches Neptune, the outermost major planet, in four hours. It takes sunlight four years to reach the nearest star, Alpha Centauri.
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