October 2025 Stargazing Guide
And away we go.
Greetings, junior scientist, scientists, and citizens of this great big weird, wild, and wonderful world in which we live.
As always, I'm your humble science communicator, the great Orbax, coming to you from the Department of Physics at the University of Guelph and I welcome you to our October 2025 Star Gazing Guide.
Greeeeetings boo-nior scary-tists! Yeah I didn’t have a pun for that one. Ghosts and ghouls abound this month as our nights get longer by well over an hour and we enter into spooky season. Sunrise this month moves from 7:19 a.m. on the 1st to 7:56 a.m. on the 31st. And sunset moves from 7:01 p.m. on the 1st to 6:13 p.m. on Halloween. This means that by all Hallow's Eve, we'll be looking into almost 14 hours of dark skies. So, what should we look for this month? We gaze upon a super moon, look for some planetary pals, and try to spot a meteor or two.
All this and more when we just take some time...
to look up.
This month starts off with International Observe the Moon Night on October 4th with the moon in its waxing gibbous phase.
If you're in Canada, seek out your local chapter of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, RASC,
to make some friends and join in on any of their observation events.
Our Full Moon this month is on October 6th and is the first of three consecutive supermoons this year. The Moon's orbit around the Earth isn't a perfect circle. It's an ellipse. Therefore, sometimes the Moon is closer to us and other times it's further away. If a Full Moon takes place when the Moon is closest to the Earth, it can appear to be 14% bigger and 30% brighter than when the Full Moon takes place furthest away from the Earth.
This is what we call a supermoon.
The October Full Moon is the closest Full Moon to the equinox and would therefore be referred to as the Hunter Moon by settlers preparing for the winter season.
Since many of the First Nations referred to last month's Full Moon as the halfway moon with this year featuring 13 moons from spring to spring, the Mi'kmaw refer to this Oct's Moon as Wikumkewiku’s, the Mate Calling Moon.
The gas giants Saturn and Jupiter are now well established in our night sky and easy to spot. Saturn will already be visible at sunset part way up the sky in the southeast. While Jupiter rises in the early morning hours and reaches its highest peak in the sky right around sunrise.
This month we have two minor meteor showers. The first is the Draconids peeking on the night of October 8th into the 9th and radiating from the constellation Draco the Dragon. Unfortunately, it'll be unlikely to spot anything due to the overwhelming light of the supermoon.
Your best bet for shooting stars this month are the Orionids produced by Earth passing through the dust left by Halley's comet and radiating from the familiar constellation of Orion in the east after midnight. Now, while only an average shower producing about 20 meteors an hour, the Orionids actually coincides with the New Moon, meaning that our sky will be the darkest it will get all month long.
Good luck, junior scientists.
October is a special time of year.
As the leaves change colour and drop from the trees, so does the last vestige of summer pass into the void, opening the doorway into the coming winter.
A time of crisp long nights of magical sights and of course cosmic and spooky delights.
All this and more when we just take some time... to look up.
See you next month, junior scientists, and don't forget to have a science-tastic day.
Special thanks to Royal City Science's own planetary geochemist Dr. Glynis Perrett for her help in preparing our star gazing guide.
And the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada.