This is Ephemeris for Wednesday, October 8th. Today the Sun will be up for 11 hours and 20 minutes, setting at 7:09, and it will rise tomorrow at 7:51. The Moon, 2 days past full, will rise at 7:42 this evening.
Let’s take our weekly look at the whereabouts of the naked-eye planets. Saturn rises before sunset in the east. It is the brightest star like object in the east southeastern sky at 8 PM not long after the Moon rises. In a telescope Saturn sports a very thin ring, 1.2° from being edge on in telescopes. Saturn has an axial tilt of about 27°, so it has seasons like the Earth and since its rings are over its equator, when they go edge on to the Sun, it is an equinox for it, which happened this past May. Earth, being close to the Sun, sees nearly the same thing. Now the ring angle for us will decrease to about a third of a degree by November 23rd before increasing. By 7 AM, Jupiter will appear high in the southeast, under the stars of Gemini. With brighter Venus low in the east.
The astronomical event times given in this blog are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan (Lat 44.7° N, Long 85.7° W; EDT, UT – 4 hours) unless stated otherwise. Times will be different for other locations.
Addendum
Saturn in the east southeast with the just risen waning gibbous Moon at 8 PM tonight, October 8, 2025. Created using Stellarium.
The Moon tonight, October 8, 2025. A view visible in small telescopes showing an image with and without selected features labeled. Created using Stellarium, LibreOffice Draw, and GIMP.
Venus and Jupiter are visible in the southeastern sky among the winter stars at 7 AM tomorrow morning, October 9, 2025. Created using Stellarium.
Telescopic Saturn, Jupiter and Venus (north up) as they would be seen in a small telescope with the same magnification. On the evening of the October 8, 2025, Saturn will be 19.3″ in diameter, but its rings, being nearly edge on, should show up brighter than seen here, and extend to 45.0″. They are tilted 1.2° from being edge on. At 7 AM on the morning of October 9, 2025, Jupiter will be 37.9″ in diameter. Venus’ apparent diameter will be 10.8″, and be 92.7% illuminated. It’s on the far side of the Sun. The (”) symbol means seconds of arc, or 1/3600th of a degree. Created using Cartes du Ciel (Sky Charts), LibreOffice Draw and GIMP.
The naked-eye planets and the Moon at sunset and sunrise on a single night, starting with sunset on the right on October 8th, 2025. The night ends on the left with sunrise on the 9th. Click or tap on the image to enlarge it. Created using my LookingUp app and GIMP.
This is a low precision ephemeris of the Sun Moon and naked eye planet positions for today and tomorrow, October 8th and 9th, 2025. Some of the columns are self-explanatory, others are not. The transit column is the time that the body crosses the meridian and is due south. Elong, for elongation, is the angle between the Sun and that body. RA is right ascension, which is the object’s east-west position on the celestial sphere in hours and minutes. Dec is declination which is the north-south position of the object on the celestial sphere in degrees and minutes. R is the distance of that object from the Sun in astronomical units. An astronomical unit is about 93 million miles or 150 million kilometers. And Delta is the distance of that object from the Earth, also in astronomical units. I omit the ‘m’ in am and pm for compactness. The data was generated using my LookingUp for DOS app and displayed as a table by my Ephemeris Helper app.
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