October 22
Swift Debris
Sun Position
The Sun is in Scorpius near -14° declination. In the Northern Hemisphere, the last of summer's warmth is typically gone from mornings; in the Southern Hemisphere, the first genuinely warm evenings of spring arrive.
Sky Highlight
The Orionid shower continues near peak on October 22, with rates typically 10-20 meteors per hour under dark skies. The meteors are fast (among the swiftest annual shower members) and tend to produce trains that persist for a second or two after the streak fades. Best after midnight from either hemisphere.
Deep Sky Object
NGC 891, an edge-on spiral galaxy about 30 million light-years away. NGC 891 in Andromeda is the textbook edge-on spiral galaxy, showing a prominent dark dust lane bisecting its disk along the entire length. It is the image that most clearly illustrates what the Milky Way might look like from outside if you stood at 90 degrees to its plane. Best for Northern Hemisphere observers in autumn; from southern mid-latitudes it is accessible but lower in the sky.
Featured Star
Hamal (α Ari) is an orange giant (K2IIICa-1) about 66 light-years away. Its apparent brightness of magnitude 2.0 makes it the brightest star in Aries, though that distinction would have felt more consequential to ancient astronomers who regarded its constellation as the start of the zodiacal year. It is now simply the brightest marker of a region the Sun passes through in mid-April. Hamal, the ram's head, once the star that marked the start of spring.
Around This Date
- October 22, 1966The Soviet Luna 12 probe achieved lunar orbit and photographed the surface in preparation for future robotic landers.
- October 24, 1946A camera aboard a captured V-2 rocket launched from White Sands, New Mexico, captured the first photographs of Earth from space, a 65-mile altitude image that was genuinely new to human eyes.
Orionid meteors are the dust of Halley's Comet, arriving in October decades after the comet's last visit, a long-delayed delivery.