Sky Tour Podcast for October 2025

I’m Kelly Beatty of Sky & Telescope magazine, and tonight we’re going on a tour of the stars and planets that you’ll see overhead during October. This month we’ll celebrate a late Harvest Moon, take a quick look around before dawn, look for bits of Halley’s Comet flashing in the night, and use the planet Saturn to find celestial treats in its vicinity, including the incredibly distant Andromeda Galaxy. So grab your curiosity, and come along with me on this month’s Sky Tour.
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October is a great month for stargazing, because sunset comes pretty early, sunrise pretty late, and nighttime temperatures are generally pleasant. So let’s start our celestial journey this month by taking stock of the Moon’s whereabouts. The month opens with the lunar disk very obvious in the evening sky even before sunset. It’s a couple of days past its first-quarter phase, which came at the close of September. 
Full Moon will follow late on October 6th. Ordinarily this would traditionally be called the full Hunter’s Moon, but as I explained in last month’s Sky Tour, that full Moon on October 6th is just a handful of hours closer to September’s equinox that the full Moon on September 7th. So, this year at least, we’ll celebrate the full Harvest Moon in early October.
We call this the Harvest Moon because, at this time of year, the nearly full Moon rises only about a half hour later each succeeding evening, as opposed to the usual 50 minutes. It has to do with the shallow slant of the Moon’s orbit with respect to the eastern horizon right now. This geometry gives farmers a little extra late-evening light for harvesting their crops, hence the name. The effect is more pronounced at higher northern latitudes and less so down south. 
Rounding out the lunar month, last or third-quarter Moon follows on October 13th, new Moon on the 21st, and a return to first quarter on the 29th. So if you’re infatuated with “lunar looking,” you’ll want to be out during early and late October evenings. But if you prefer your nights Moon-free, then the middle third of the month will be best for you.
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If planet-watching is your thing, well, you’ll be a little challenged to spot them this month. Venus and Jupiter are easy to see, actually, but you’ll have to make the effort to be up well before dawn, by 6 am or so in most places. That’s not so bad, right? Venus will be unmistakable, gleaming brightly low in the southeast. It’s gradually dropping from its peak predawn visibility back in July, and it’ll still linger into November. But then it sinks from view before reappearing in the evening sky next March. So catch Venus while you can!
Jupiter isn’t nearly so bright, but it’s high up, more than halfway to overhead, when dawn arrives. You’ll find it in Gemini, accompanying its anchor Castor and Pollux across the sky. In fact, by month’s end Jupiter will be rising not long after midnight, getting ready for a great evening showing at year’s end. Not far from Jupiter are the other bright stars of winter: Capella, almost overhead; Orion to its right, and both Procyon and Sirius to its lower right.
Pivoting into the evening sky, you have a tiny chance of spotting Mars very low in the west-southwest about 30minutes after sunset, and even then you might need binoculars to tease the Red Planet into view. Your odds improve a bit for seeing Mercury in that same location late in October.
So that once again leaves us with Saturn for the evening’s planetary entertainment. Start looking for it low in the east about an hour after sunset. If you don’t spot Saturn right away, just give Earth another hour to spin toward east, and by 8 pm it should be easily in view. If you’re not sure, the nearly full Moon will be just 2° above Saturn on October 5th and also close by on November 1st.
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Let’s use Saturn as a celestial benchmark for exploring this part of the evening sky. Saturn and all the constellations surrounding it are positioned over the eastern horizon at nightfall early this month. But by late evening or in late October they’ll all swing higher up and closer to due south. So pick whichever time suits you.
Saturn is pretty lonely in this location. The only stars comparably bright are Capella, about eight fists to the upper left, and Vega, likewise eight fists to the upper right. So if your location is really awash with light pollution, seeing the stars and constellations I’m about to describe will be challenging. In that case, try to find a local spot free of bright lights close by, like a local park, a soccer field, or a baseball field.
Let’s start with something easy. Look above Saturn, by two or three fists, for a very large box of four stars, about 1½ fists on a side, that are roughly the same medium brightness. This simple pattern is known the world over as the Great Square of Pegasus, and it forms the body of this famous mythical horse. But this horse is weird. It’s flying upside down, and it has no hindquarters. Let me show you what I mean. 
Start with the star on the right corner of the square, and look for a loose chain of three or four stars that extends to the right and then turns up. The star at the end is call Enif, an Arabic word meaning “nose” or “muzzle.”  The star at the top of the box marks the belly of Pegasus, and two loose strings of stars extend upward from there to mark the horse’s front legs.
Now the star at the left corner of the box, the brightest of the four is called Alpheratz [al-FEE-rats], another Arabic name meaning “navel of the horse.” For many centuries this star was considered to be part of both Pegasus and the constellation Andromeda, which extends to the left. But — get this — Alpheratz is no longer part of Pegasus, at least officially. In 1930, astronomers assigned it exclusively to Andromeda, and in fact it’s now Andromeda’s brightest star. You might recall that she was an ill-fated princess in Greek mythology, chained to a rock at sea as a human sacrifice but ultimately saved by her hero and future husband Perseus, who is conveniently located to Andromeda’s immediate left. 
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Let’s go on a celestial hunt in Andromeda. Start by holding out your arm and putting your three middle fingers together. This will come in very handy — um, no pun intended. Starting with Alpheratz, look to its left for a somewhat dimmer star that’s a bit more than three fingers away. Now go farther to the left by another three fingers to a star that’s just as bright as Alpheratz. This star is named Mirach [MY-rack], a linguistic corruption of the Arabic word for “girdle” or “loin cloth,” presumably keeping Andromeda modestly attired while on the rock.
Once you reach Mirach, make a 90° right turn, upward, following two faint stars in a line. The more distant one is, again, three fingers from Mirach. Now, concentrate very hard on the patch of sky just to the upper right of this star. Do you see a barely-there patch of haze in the sky? If you do, congratulations! You are gazing at the most distant object that can be seen with the human eye. It’s the Andromeda Galaxy, comparable in size and mass to our own Milky Way, and a whopping 2½ million light-years away.
Now, if you don’t see the galaxy, or if you can’t see the sequence of stars to get there, grab any pair of binoculars and try again. You’ll feel justifiably proud once you spot it.
Let’s track down one more constellation. It’s Pisces. Both Greek and Roman mythology envision fish here, but the underlying stories are messy and vary a lot, depending on who you believe. Anyway, the basic shape is two starry fish tied together by a V-shaped cord. This pattern is directly below the Great Square of Pegasus, stretching to the left and right in a large, broad V that’s about three fists tall and four wide. All of the stars here are pretty faint — so if you can’t see them from your location, at least you’ll know where to look when you get out under a dark sky.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t make note of the other bright stars that you can see in October’s evening skies. The brightest of these, Arcturus, is very low in the west in evening twilight. It will drop from view about two hours after sunset, so don’t wait too long to find it. And overhead are the widely spaced corners of the Summer Triangle. Vega is brightest of the three and farthest west; Deneb is very close to overhead; and Altair is a few fists to their south. You’ll have lots of nights to find and enjoy this trio. Although it’s called the Summer Triangle, you’ll be able to follow all three of these stars as they slide westward until the end of December.
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Did you get a chance to see the Perseid meteor shower back in August? It put on a nice show, as usual. Well, October offers another chance to see a meteor shower — though it’s not nearly as exciting. The Orionids is a long-lasting shower that culminates on the night of October 20th. We call them the Orionids because they seem to fan across the sky from a point not far from the star Betelgeuse in Orion. These meteors are created as Earth crosses the orbit of Halley’s Comet, allowing little bits of dust shed by this famous comet to slam into our atmosphere at 41 miles per second.
The circumstances for this year’s display couldn’t be better, because there’s no Moon around. Now, Orion doesn’t rise over the eastern horizon until late evening, and the meteors are more plentiful as the Great Hunter climbs higher in the sky. Honestly, the best viewing will be between 2 and 6 a.m. At its best, viewed from a dark location, you might expect to see one of these Halley bits every 5 minutes or so.
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At month’s end, of course, is Halloween. Go ahead and trot out the pumpkins and fuzzy spiders, then try doing what I do. When trick-or-treaters invade our neighborhood, I set up my telescope on our driveway so that all those little goblins and their parents can take a quick peek through the eyepiece. It’s always a big hit in my neighborhood, and you should try it. The Moon is two days past first quarter, and Saturn is in a good spot high up to the Moon’s left.  Don’t forget to look overhead and point out the Summer Triangle!
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That’s about it for this month. If you want more tips for viewing the night sky, check out our website, SkyandTelescope.com, which offers great star- and planet-gazing activities
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Sky Tour is a production of Sky & Telescope, a division of the American Astronomical Society, and is produced by me, Kelly Beatty.
Next month we’ll spend a little more time with some lesser-known constellations of the autumn sky. Until then, I wish you clear skies.