This is Ephemeris for Wednesday, October 29th. Today the Sun will be up for 10 hours and 18 minutes, setting at 6:35, and it will rise tomorrow at 8:18. The Moon, at first quarter today, will set at 12:50 tomorrow morning.
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 as soon as it gets dark. In a telescope Saturn sports a very thin ring, six 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 extremely thin and can be difficult to pick up. Jupiter will rise before midnight at 11:17 PM. By 7:30 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 southwest. Brilliant Venus, which will rise at 6:48 AM will be very low in the east-southeast at 7:30 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 Fomalhaut and the Moon tonight at 9:00 PM, October 29, 2025. Created using Stellarium.
The first quarter Moon tonight, October 29, 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 east and southern sky among the winter stars at 7:30 AM tomorrow morning, October 30, 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 29, 2025, Saturn will be 19.0″ in diameter, but its rings, being nearly edge on, may not be visible at all though they extend to 44.2″, they are tilted 0.7° from being edge on. Titan is transiting the planet at that time. At 6 AM on the morning of October 30, 2025, Jupiter will be 40.4″ in diameter. At 7:30 AM, Venus’ apparent diameter will be 10.5″, and be 95.9% 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 29th, 2025. The night ends on the left with sunrise on the 30th. 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 29th and 30th, 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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