Night Sky

This week's events

On the evening of Tuesday 27 October, the Moon slides through the Pleiades, the Seven Sisters star cluster in Taurus. Northern: from north-eastern North America it briefly covers some of the cluster's stars; across Europe and Asia it passes within about a finger-width at arm's length overnight. Southern: the pair sits low but close. The Moon is very bright, so with binoculars: watch stars wink out or slip past its edge. All week, both branches of the Taurid meteor shower are active, so watch for occasional slow, bright fireballs from either hemisphere.

Planets

Before dawn, Jupiter outshines every star, with orange Mars on one side and Leo's brightest star, Regulus, on the other. The three are almost evenly spaced in a line, and Mars creeps closer to Jupiter each morning ahead of their close meeting in mid-November. Saturn is the evening's planet, well up after dark and setting in the early hours. Mercury and Venus are both too close to the twilight glare to see this week.

The Moon

Tuesday's pass through the Pleiades is the headline. On Wednesday the Moon also reaches its closest point to Earth this month. Then before dawn on Sunday 1 November, it sits beside the Beehive star cluster, with Mars and Jupiter a little farther along the same path.

Stars and constellations

Northern: The Great Square of Pegasus and the chain of Andromeda ride high in the evening. Below them, the Perseus Double Cluster shows as a hazy patch, and with binoculars: two glittering star swarms side by side. Capella climbs in the evening and Orion is up by midnight. Southern: Fomalhaut shines high, Achernar marks the end of the river Eridanus, and Sirius and Canopus blaze before dawn.

Best viewing tip

For the Pleiades pass, start looking about an hour after dark on Tuesday. Even where the Moon doesn't cover any stars, watching it creep past the cluster over an hour shows you the Moon's motion with your own eyes.

Beyond the naked eye

Long-exposure photos show the Pleiades wrapped in blue haze. That haze isn't the cloud the stars were born from. It's an unrelated cloud of dust the young cluster happens to be drifting through, about 440 light-years away, lit up like fog around a streetlight.