Hello, and thank you very much for listening to this episode of the night sky podcast. My name is Billy Newman. And I'm Marina Hansen. And tonight we're out in Maui. And we're outside right now. And we're trying to try us out where we do some recordings of podcasts while we're outside and making some observations. And I'm all for that, that even with the wind, and maybe whatever else you might hear in the background, it's maybe a little more interesting to kind of go through some of the observations that we're making while we're making them. So it has a bit more of a like a live feel to it. But I think it's pretty nice tonight. It's cool. I think we're pretty close to a full moon. What would you say it is, Marina. I think that may actually be full tonight. Yeah, it probably looks like it's gonna be at least in the next 12 hours. So I'd say it's pretty close to being a full moon. And I bet it seems like about the right amount of time. It's been about two weeks since we had a new moon a couple of weeks, or you know, like a few weeks back, so it seems like it'd be right in line to be full. about NASA. I guess. This is the October Full Moon which is pretty cool. Was that the Is it the wolf moon? Or is it the November moon? Is it the beaver moon? November is the beaver man November is the beaver moon? Yeah. That's very cool. Yeah, I think that this one is the Wolf Man, the wolf moon, and then September is sort of the harvest. Man. Is that right? I think so. I need to there's a couple ideas around the Harvest Moon, I remember hearing about where it's at what is it? It's like, the first full moon after the autumnal equinox like the fall equinox, September 21. So if there's a full moon that falls after that, pretty quickly, whatever that next full moon is, I think that was supposed to be the Harvest Moon, but also like that the other order of months as there would be harvest in September. And then in October, it'd be like wolf moon, and then beaver moon. And then I don't know what it is in December, but is that it's been out tonight. And looking at the full moon. We're up on a hillside in western Maui, which is pretty cool and new to us. And I think we're looking at a bit of cloud cover that's kind of moving around the mountain over here. And it seems like it's almost like that all the time. Like you look out there. And it looks like it's raining there, doesn't it? Yeah, I think that it is. Yeah, it's interesting. Like how it looks like it's raining out there all the time. I guess it's how how it's made to be a rain forest upstairs because of all the precipitation they get. And I guess that's sort of what I understand about like the weather pattern on the northern side of the island too. Is that like that gets more rain and weather than what we do over here on the the western facing side of this mountain over here.

Yeah, up in Kapalua where I work. It is rainy every single morning as seams train off and on throughout the day.

Yeah, so it was sprinkling on me when I got off work today. It's pretty good. So it's kind of weird how it goes back and forth like that so much, but yeah, I guess I guess just earlier this week was the orionid meteor shower. Did you read that much on that? I think you were talking to your aunt about that and like how it was coming into its peak phase just a couple days ago?

Yeah. I think the 21st and 22nd were supposed to be the peak days Today's the 23rd. So yesterday, the day before?

Yeah, it's cool. I got to see like one of them go by while I was out doing some observations, but with the heavy moonlight it's kind of dampened. I guess some of the dark skies that you would have to really, I guess enjoy watching a bunch of meteor shower. Or you're like watching the meteors come in through the meteor shower. But it's cool. Yeah. Through Ryan in meteor shower. I guess that's that's remnants of Halley's Comet that came through. Like back in 86. I guess this is last pass 8687 was his last pass through the solar system when it was visible before I was born, so I might not ever get to see it. And then, I guess what it was, is that Yeah, like as the comet comes through the solar system on its elliptical orbit comes around the Senate and jets back out on its way. It's like 88 year trip around the sign something like that. I guess it leaves like remnants behind it in its dust trail. And so as the earth is moving around the sun, and its revolution around the Sun throughout the year, it passes through a couple of those zones, where that comment has left debris behind this is how we get most of our meteor showers as as debris that's left behind by a passing comment. And so that debris still just sitting out there in space, I think relatively without a lot of motion. And then it's actually our earth that has the momentum as it swings through at its pretty high velocity as it's coming around. The Senate plows into that that rim, or that little field of desks that's out there in that location. And so there's new desks for us to hit every year as we pass through that zone. Again, that's how we get the proceed meteor showers in a similar way. So we get, like the rest of the meteor showers that we're familiar with. But yeah, this set of the Orion and meteor showers, is kind of from that same position to that same reasoning is that it was Halley's Comet back in 86. And then I don't know back it like a turn of the century before that, that left dust in the pathway out here. And then now it's the earth kind of colliding into it. And so the reason that we call it the Orion and meteor shower, or the perceived meteor shower, or the Leonid meteor shower, whatever, when we might be talking about I guess, is because that is the constellation in which it appears as though most of the media, right, so the debris, the shooting stars that we're seeing, are originating from. And so like tonight, Orion is really not even up yet. So that's why we have to like wait up so late at night to start to see it as because I think Orion would be rising out over this way, like above, above the horizon over here to the east. And so that's why we'd have to wait till like midnight or later. But the idea is that they're kind of becoming originating from a position sort of around where Orion is sort of similar to how it is in the summertime, when we're looking at the Perseids out of the north eastern sky. We have to wait kind of late at night for the constellation Perseus to rise up. And that's when you start seeing, you know, the, the, the meteorites, the shooting stars starting to come out of that location as a kind of originating from the north eastern position in the sky. But you can kind of see them all over sometimes it's it's not like a perfect way to delineate what the location of the meteors are going to be. It's kind of cool. It's cool that we had it this last week. That was cool. You got to mention it to some of your family that there was they were asking about it. It's a nice night that night, there's probably about what 30 40% cloud cover when I turn over this is fairly cloudy up here. Yeah, seems like it's just it's just that way on the island right now. Or it seems like we're kind of battling partly cloudy skies most nights. Maybe it's this time of year. But with the full moon there's not really a ton of stars to see beyond like second magnitude. But you know, when you look at like so we're looking at right now we can see, we see like Vega up there. We see the NAB Seder over here, and then we see like Altair over there. And then you can kind of make out some of the features as well, you can really only make out about six or seven in between, let's say like, if we're looking at Altair, and Vega, with the full moon lab, we can see like 1234567 maybe eight stars or so in between and that zone right there is the Milky Way galaxy. So like all of that dense, rich color in the Milky Way right there is completely obstructed by the luminance of the full moon tonight. It's interesting. That is that's kind of like what I guess you could call it light pollution. It's not really the same as light pollution. That's that's what you get with a full moon night when you don't get to see some of those dimmer. richer, finer textured stars. It's pretty

it is the planets are really the most visible things. It seems like yeah, we're playing security right now. I'm looking at Mars. Definitely.

We can definitely see Mars that was looking really good. Looks like down there kind of on the horizon is sort of where we're starting to see. Sagittarius. You know, when I was out the other night, I was at that star watching event. And I was really surprised because it wasn't even nine o'clock yet. But it seemed like like Scorpio was gone. I mean, I guess we're almost at November. So it seems like it would be Arcturus is already pretty well set it seems like and it seems like Sagittarius that teapot is tipped up on its side almost the whole way. But what's cool though, is I think out there. Do you see that one? If you take a couple steps everybody was buying that telephone pole. I think that that is Saturn out there. That low one. I do see it. Yeah, I'm pretty sure that Saturn so right now Saturn is right out in front of Sagittarius, which is cool. So if you look at you're able to spot that T pi, maybe earlier in the evening than it is right now. You'd still have like a couple hours into the evening or into the darkness where you're going to be able to spot Sagittarius and Saturn along with that. I think maybe I'm wrong. But I think Saturn is still in retrograde. Like I think it's still making it's kind of retrograde motion AP. And then and then it'll kind of go back into pro grade motion again, as it kind of continues on through Sagittarius. And then over the next couple years, it'll move on up to like a, like Capricorn over here, as I think Capricorns over there. Yeah, that's where I can kind of see that double star that's at the top of Capricorn. And that's where Mars was earlier this year, like the summer where we were making videos and talking about it, watching it rise on the horizon in Oregon. We were watching Mars at opposition, a lot closer to that energy Capricorn there and that's all this distance here that we're looking at is how much Mars is transited in pro grade motion now, since that time in like early summer, or like early July. I guess when we're first starting to look at it there, so it's cool like looking at how much has changed but we're, we're getting to that point where we're Mars is like moved on a bit from its position opposition and now it's going to kind of quickly change into like a dimmer stock you remember like two years ago or we're looking at Mars and Saturn together now Saturn and we see SCorp or see Saturn in Sagittarius before we're looking at Mars and Saturn in Scorpio next to Antares I was in like the summer of 2016. And, and then we saw how much Mars had moved in those two years before it came back around to that same position in the sky. So do you remember like how different it was over those two years like had Dimmick off for a while and we were like looking at it with you in the morning one time. And it just looked like a little speck. It was hardly even worth noticing.

Yeah, it was really faint. It's interesting how much brighter it is now. Like through this year, it's been so much more noticeable. Yeah. And that's that's that

two year cycle. Like I said, 24 month cycle that that Mars is on, where that's how long it takes Mars to complete. Its its movements, procreate motion around the 12 constellations. Do you hear that in the podcast? I think that's a guy playing a trumpet. Well, so flavor in our outdoor podcast so. So So yeah, over those two years that had gone all the way around the ecliptic. So So been in Scorpio two years ago, in August, they had gone through Capricorn Aquarius and Pisces and Aries and then onward through Taurus and Gemini and cancer and through Leo, and all that, and then a kind of come back around, and then it came through. And then it came through and pass through Scorpio, like earlier this year, and then is now at that, but that's what took two years to happen. And so when we're looking at it at Saturn over there, Saturn has made it just from Scorpio, back to Sagittarius in those two years. And that's like the difference in the speed of motion that it is for these to transit around the ecliptic line. That's super interesting to start to notice that. So Mars is two years. Jupiter is 12 years. That's the next night. So if you think there's the earth and there's Mars, then there's the asteroid down, then there's a huge amount of distance before you get from Mars to Jupiter. It's like It's like many more times the distance in the solar system. So that and that's a way of noticing it really is. We have two years, we still are six one year to get around the sun. We have Mars going on in two years. We have Jupiter taking 12 years to get around the sun. And then we have Saturn out there taking almost 29 years. That means it's it was there about the time that I was born 2930 years ago. Is that amazing?

Yeah, it's really quiet like back in that same spot.

Yeah, it is really interesting. It's interesting kind of noticing, like the the cycles, the different timing, and then sort of like historically with me a little bit too, like, like, I think, well, I don't know, I think it was like Saturn, it's hard to focus on those fun little jazz in the background. I hope you can hear it. But I think it was like, Saturn was kind of known as like, Saturn nine, I think is a word. And then there's Mercurial. That's a word. I think Saturn nine is like slow and lethargic. And lazy, I think too. And then Mercurial is like, chaotic and fast paced, and like, engaged. Does that make sense. And so like, if you think about it, maybe in a sense of where those words had the derivation from Saturn is the slowest moving planet, taking 29 years to move around. And Mercury, the closest planet to the sun is the one that moves around the fastest. And as the most chaotic type of motion, it's really kind of harder to track. Venus is even more stable than that, because it's was a lot brighter, and it's a little further out from the sun. And so because it's an interior planet, we see a kind of move. We don't see it move out to opposition, but we see it kind of stay closer to the sun, as it kind of orbits on the internal track between the Earth and the Sun. It's interesting, it's been going it's cool kind of noticing, like where some of those things come from.

Yeah, it's really interesting getting to observe it for so many years now or just being a lot more conscious of it than I had been in the past. And you really do get to, to see in the motion of it, like just how different they are and how far they move around.

Yeah, yeah, I've been really fascinated by the end like well, the other thing that I was noticing too, is like so this year Mars to two years ago, Mars came into opposition and went into retrograde when I was in like Libra and Scorpio over there. And then now two years later, it's gone into opposition around Sagittarius and Capricorn really like Capricorn is where it seems to have ended up. And so you kind of notice, like how far that is over, that it had moved before it had come into come into opposition again, and gone into its retrograde motion. So let's take like that. Alright, it's kind of interesting to think about how that would sort of play out like two years from now, it's going to be like out over here. So it'll be sort of a fall time opposition, maybe two years from now it'll be, or maybe two or four years from now, it's going to be like a Halloween opposition. So I have a bear, that'd be cool. Or Yeah, the red planet will be coming in over, it'll be just rising at the time, that we're coming into October. So we're gonna have it coming into, like October and Halloween, around the time that we're gonna see Mars rising up above the horizon line as the sun starts to set. So it'll be kind of interesting to sort of follow that over like a longer amount of time, but it's cool kind of getting to notice it a bit. What else do we see Marina. I was looking over here. Like up toward the moon where it is. And then I think like back or so before the moon down, like over there, I think is I think that's where Aries is like Aries the RAM. It's another one of the constellations that's in the Zodiac, or along the ecliptic line. So I think that'd be like the Aries right over that clouds gonna overtake and then down from there. We have tourists. That's up now. You see tourists everywhere.

I do see tourists. Yes. far enough away from the moon that I can actually make it out. I can't really see. I can't really see anything that's right around the moon too. Well, it's so bright. Oh, yeah.

Yeah, there's nothing we can see around the moon right now. But it's cool kind of spot and nobody there. So I guess it's like Aries, the RAM. Taurus, the bull we see all over on. And then I guess right now the Pleiades are where its tail would be are up in like a cloud. So we can't see that. But we can at least make out where it is a little bit. And then as we saw, I guess that means that like Orion is probably getting close to coming up here on the horizon like maybe like due east from us. That's kind of cool to think about. And that's sort of something I always remembered from like, a couple years ago, when we were here. Now is like now that we're at the now that we're 20 degrees above the equator, there's a lot more of the Southern Hemisphere that we get to see. And so that's why we get to see like Orion rise quite a bit higher, like almost like due east from us right now. And that's why we get to see further south from Orion, we get to see like canopus come up, which is really cool. Like the brightest stars visible in the southern hemisphere sky that's not visible to the northern hemisphere sky. So it's really exciting that we get to, I guess kind of early for me it's it's it's really cool to see a different sky. Yeah. And it's well, it's really interesting that we were talking about like the winter hexagon or the heavenly g like one of those sort of more modern asterisms. It's visible of the collection of this really bright first magnitude stars that we see in the Northern Hemisphere. Do you remember we were talking about that? There was like, I guess it was start with like, well like Capella out there that we're starting to see. And then there was like Castor and Pollux. And then like proceeding and serious. And then Rigel. And then it would come up to Alderaan. And then like over to battle Jews or butyl ease. And it was is really interesting, kind of like noticing that. But if you notice that they're all kind of in this pattern, I guess right now they're just coming up over the eastern horizon. After that, yeah, like we're gonna see like Orion as part of the some of the stars, I was just mentioning that if you kind of continue that trail down at these really bright first magnitude stars, they're all kind of in this clumped zone over here. And that goes all the way down to connote this, which is further south where we normally don't get to see it. So it's cool to kind of notice that all of these bright stars are sort of in zone together. I think that's still part of like the Milky Way. So my read on that, and in that way, whereas, so we're talking about it. Yeah, so it goes in section. Yeah, it would go over like where Saturn is over there. Bye. Bye. Sagittarius A Sagittarius is like the heart of the galaxy. That would be like looking into the center of the galaxy. And then I think it would follow right up here, as we see like Altair and Vega, have you read over there and then it would cut over to Cassiopeia that we see up here. And then it would be kind of over here, where we see Capella. And then there's gonna be like a lot of it that cuts over here where we see it like a lot of this band of these first magnitude stars, where we see like Orion and Taurus over here, and then as we cut down and cut it to the south, if you kind of imagine like one big line, like this here, that's going to be all along the Milky Way line, which is really interesting. So it's really weird to start to perceive it as like it's canopus in the southern hemisphere Yeah. And then see us and procyon and Rigel and beat ogis and Oliver on and Castor and Pollux and Capella. And then like as a kind of like scoops up, then we see and it's all I can one line with weird that kind of imagined across the sphere of the earth. And then we have like Cassiopeia and then like the NAB, and Seder and Vega and Altair, and then like over to the stars, and like Scorpio, and the stars in Sagittarius over they're all part of like this Milky Way band that cuts all the way around. So it's pretty cool. That's really interesting, like looking at that and looking at how that that kind of works in the sky. But it's kind of an open that. Well, I guess tonight we got like, what 30 40% Cloud and a full moon. So we'll wait a couple months, and then we'll be able to see more of the stuff or more of the stuff that would be more prominently visible in the southern hemisphere. But I'm looking forward to getting to make some observations of condolence and of some of the constellations that we see in the southern hemisphere. I think it's gonna be really fun.

Me too. I'm really excited for some clear nights here. Yeah,

it's gonna be really cool. I want to do a bunch of like, skywatching like naked eye observations with you out here, but it's pretty fun, like hanging outside and doing it this way. It's kind of nice to get an appointed staff and like, look at things. I was gonna make some sense when when I listened to it back or listened back to it and audio, but it's fine. They should be I mean, I appreciate it. Yeah, I'm glad we found this cool spot. Yeah, I think it's really nice being out here. And yeah, it's nice, nice spray evenings in Hawaii. It's great. Just pretty comfortable. Thanks for hanging out with me tonight. I appreciate it. But yeah, thanks a lot, everybody for listening to this. Recorded in the field episode of the night sky podcast. I really appreciate it. So on behalf of Marina Hanson, my name is Billy Newman. And thank you very much for listening to this episode of the night sky podcast.

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