This is Ephemeris for Wednesday, October 22nd. Today the Sun will be up for 10 hours and 38 minutes, setting at 6:45, and it will rise tomorrow at 8:09. The Moon, 1 day past new, will set at 6:54 this evening.
Let’s take our weekly look at the whereabouts of the naked-eye planets. Saturn is the brightest star like object in the east southeastern sky at 8 PM. In a telescope Saturn sports a very thin ring, eight tenths of a degree from being edge on in telescopes. Many times I’ve been asked whether they can see Saturn’s rings in their telescope. Normally I’d say yes. Currently, the rings appear very thin and can be difficult to pick up. Jupiter will finally rise before midnight, barely, at 11:50 PM. By 7 AM, it will appear high in the south-southeast, below the stars of Gemini, with Orion and the other bright stars of winter in the south. Brilliant Venus, which will rise at 6:30 AM will be very low in the east at 7 AM.
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 with the constellations Pegasus, Andromeda and Cassiopeia in the southeastern sky at 8:00 PM, October 22, 2025. Created using Stellarium.
Jupiter with the stars and constellations of winter. A preview of the evening skies a few months from now, but in the morning at 7:00 AM, October 22, 2025. Leo, a spring constellation is up at that, and below is the just risen Venus. 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 22, 2025, Saturn will be 19.1″ in diameter, but its rings, being nearly edge on, should show up brighter than seen here, and extend to 44.5″. They are tilted 0.8° from being edge on. At 7 AM on the morning of October 23, 2025, Jupiter will be 39.5″ in diameter. Venus’ apparent diameter will be 10.5″, and be 95.0% 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 22nd, 2025. The night ends on the left with sunrise on the 23rd. 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 22nd and 23rd, 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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