The Ellensburg, WA sky for the week of October 10, 2026

Saturday: “I’m a little teapot, short and stout. The galactic center, I pour it out.” (I’m a Little Teapot, astronomy version, 2026.) Despite its great size and importance, the center of our Milky Way galaxy and its giant black hole remain hidden to the naked eye behind thick clouds of gas and dust. By plotting the orbits of stars near the middle of the galaxy, astronomers have determined that the black hole’s mass is equal to about 4.5 million Suns. While you can’t see the actual galactic center, you can gaze in the direction of the center by looking just to the right of the teapot asterism in the constellation Sagittarius. This point is about a half a fist held upright and at arm’s length above the south-southwestern horizon at 8:00 p.m.

Sunday: Mars is feeling very crowded in the sky tonight because it is lined up with the center of the Beehive Cluster. Of course, in real life they are far apart. Mars is a neighboring planet in our solar system and The Beehive Cluster is an open star cluster of over 300 stars about 580 light years away. See the grouping for yourself this morning. They are five and a half fists above the southeastern horizon at 6:30 a.m. The bright planet Jupiter is to the lower left of Mars and The Beehive, four fists above the east-southeastern horizon.

Monday: Vesta, the brightest asteroid, is at opposition tonight. That doesn’t mean the asteroid is spending the night saying, “no”. It does mean tonight is one of the best nights of the year to observe Vesta. First, check out the website for NASA’s Dawn spacecraft which visited Vesta 2011-2012: https://science.nasa.gov/mission/dawn/. Then try to find Vesta in the sky with binoculars. Vesta is three fists above due southeast and a little more than one fist to the lower left of the bright planet Saturn at 10:30 p.m. Find Saturn with your binoculars. Then move them about 1.5 to two binocular fields of view to the lower left. Return to this spot over the next few nights. Vesta will appear to move slightly eastward each night compared to the background stars.

Tuesday: The bright star Antares is one fist to the upper left of the moon, just above due southwest at 7:00 p.m.

Wednesday: It is time to start thinking about the Orionid meteor shower. This shower, which consists of the earth colliding with pieces of the remains of Halley's Comet's tail, peaks on the morning of October 21 but produces meteors from early October until early November. These meteors appear to come from a point in Orion, the hunter. This point is about one fist above the eastern horizon at midnight. You can follow this point throughout the night as it will remain near the prominent reddish star Betelgeuse (pronounced Bet'-el-jews). The Orionid meteors are fast - up to 40 miles per second. For more information about the Orionids, go to https://earthsky.org/?p=27937.

Thursday: Look up in the sky. It’s a bird. It’s a plane. It’s a dolphin. A dolphin? The constellation Delphinus the dolphin is nearly six fists above due south at 8:00 p.m. The constellation’s two brightest stars are called Sualocin and Rotanev, which is Nicolaus Venator spelled backwards. Venator worked at the Palermo Observatory in Italy in the mid nineteenth century. He slipped these names into Giuseppe Piazzi’s star catalog without him noticing. Sort of like when you would sneak snacks into your parent’s shopping cart, hoping they would not notice.

Friday: Rho Cassiopeiae is the most distant star that can be seen with the naked eye by most people. It is about 8,200 light years away. That means that the light that reaches your eyes from that star left over 8,000 years ago, before the beginning of time according to the Byzantine calendar. Rho Cassiopeiae is nearly straight overhead at 11:00 p.m., just above the zigzag line that marks the constellation Cassiopeia.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week. For up-to-date information about the night sky, go to https://nightsky.jpl.nasa.gov/planner.cfm. All times are Pacific Time unless noted.