By Matthew James, UNE Discovery Voyager

As the seasons change, so does the sky. As we move into spring, the abundance of sky objects associated with the dense Milky Way stretching across the sky, and the bright regions around Scorpius and Sagittarius, are now setting in the west earlier, opening us to the wider (apparently emptier) universe. The stars themselves do not appreciably move over such short time periods. The change occurs as the Earth moves around the Sun; the night side of Earth faces a slightly different direction into space each night. This change causes stars to rise about 4 minutes earlier each successive night.

The emptiness, however, is deceptive. As we look away from the galactic plane, crowded with stars, dust and gas, our view into the wider universe becomes clearer, allowing more extragalactic objects to be observed. Constellations such as Tucana, Pisces, Sculptor, and Eridanus contain galaxies far beyond our Milky Way. For example, the Sculptor Pinwheel Galaxy (NGC 300) is located in Sculptor near the border with Phoenix and is around 6 million light-years from Earth, while the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) in Tucana is a neighbouring dwarf galaxy orbiting our Milky Way.

Object of the month
47 Tucanae (47 Tuc) is a tightly packed, gravitationally bound globular cluster containing around a million stars and located in the constellation of Tucana. From dark locations, the SMC can be seen with the unaided eye, with 47 Tuc appearing nearby as a misty glow.

47 Tuc can be seen with binoculars and will look like a faint featureless fuzzy blob of light. Its full extent is approximately the apparent size full moon across the sky, although the visibility is concentrated more at its smaller core. To resolve the individual stars, you will need to use a telescope.

Although 47 Tuc appears to be near the SMC, it is within our galaxy, around 16 000 light-years away, while the SMC is around 200 000 light-years away. The stars within 47 Tuc are also very old, with the cluster being around 10.5 billion years old, making it a relic from the early history of the Milky Way.

Image of 47 Tucanae from the Digitized Sky Survey (DSS) and Hubble Space Telescope. Image sourced from NASA & ESA. https://science.nasa.gov/asset/hubble/globular-cluster-47-tucanae-2/

Image credit: Matthew James. The sky of October 15th, 2026, at 10pm AEDT for Armidale, NSW. 47 Tucanae is highlighted in red. North is at the top of the chart and the edge is the horizon around where you stand.

4^th October – Saturn at opposition
The best event of the month. Saturn will be at its closest (~ 8.43 AU from Earth), and largest apparent size for 2026. Saturn will be visible most of the night. Saturn can be seen with the naked eye as a bright, pale-yellow point of light rising in the East sky around sunset. Recently, Saturn’s rings were edge-on, and now is gradually opening up allowing use to more depth.

5^th-6^th October (Morning of) – Mars, Moon and Jupiter are close
In the morning around 5am (near dawn), the Moon passes close to Mars and Jupiter over successive mornings in the low northeast sky.

9^th-10^th October – Draconids Meteor Shower
Viewing from New England, the radiant of the Draconids meteor shower is extremely low above the northern horizon, making the shower difficult to observe.

11^th October – Best night for viewing in the month
There will be a new moon, making the nights around the 11^th and 12^th largely free of moonlight and the best time to observe in the month to observe fainter objects.

21^st-22^nd October- Orionids Meteor Shower
This meteor shower is one of two produced by the Earth moving through debris left by Halley’s Comet; the Eta Aquarids is the other. Under ideal dark-sky conditions, Orionids peak around 20 meteors per hour, however the Moon will brighten the sky until around 3am, so aim for between 3:30-4:40am.

26^th October – Full Moon
A full moon will occur at 3:11pm and rise at around 7:30pm in Armidale.