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October offers some fantastic viewing from Charleville's dark skies, with brilliant planets gracing both the evening and pre-dawn hours! As the evening twilight fades, you won't be able to miss the beautiful, yellowish glow of Saturn high in the north-east, providing a perfect opportunity to view its stunning rings through our powerful telescopes. Look towards the western horizon in the hours just after sunset for a tricky but rewarding appearance by the speedy planet Mercury, which will be near Mars for a spectacular planetary meet-up mid-month. Later in the night, the magnificent gas giant Jupiter rises in the north-east, shining brightly and offering breathtaking views of its cloud bands and Galilean moons before dawn. October also brings the peak of the Orionid Meteor Shower around the 21st, which, thanks to the very dark New Moon, should offer excellent chances to spot meteors, the dusty remnants of Halley's Comet, streaking across the sky. Finally, look high overhead to bid farewell to the core of the Milky Way, which sits beautifully in the western sky, allowing for stunning views of deep-sky objects like star clusters and nebulae.

 

Our 14-inch Meade telescopes are perfectly suited for the brilliant deep-sky objects visible shortly after sunset in October. Between 7:30 PM and 8:30 PM, we'll focus on the rich region of the Southern Milky Way as it sinks toward the west.

 

you can expect to see a breathtaking variety of celestial objects. Planets will appear as disks with visible details, such as Saturn's rings and Jupiter's cloud bands and bright moons. Our Moon will be a stunning sight, resolving into mountains, rilles, and countless craters. You'll spot man-made satellites slowly tracking across the sky and might briefly glimpse a shooting star (meteor) flash overhead. Looking out into the galaxy, you'll find shimmering open clusters of young, clearly separated stars and spectacular, fuzzy balls of ancient stars known as globular clusters. Nebulae (star-forming clouds of gas and dust) will show up as faint, wispy patches of light, and you'll even be able to observe other galaxies as faint, extended smudges, sometimes with hints of their structure.