What’s up in the night sky: October 2025

Welcome to our night sky monthly feature, where we focus on easy and fun things to see in the night sky, mostly with just your eyes. This month: planets throughout the month and a meteor shower without that pesky Moon hanging around.

All month: Super bright Venus is in the predawn east, getting lower as the weeks pass. 

All month: Very bright Jupiter rises in the middle of the night in the east, and is high overhead before dawn.

All month:  Yellowish Saturn is up in the east in the early evening, and high up and moving west through most of the rest of the night. 

All month: Reddish Mars is very low in the evening west, getting even lower as the weeks pass.

Later in the month: Bright Mercury is low in the early evening west.

Oct. 5: Yellowish Saturn is near a nearly Full Moon.

Oct. 7: Full Moon

Oct. 14: Jupiter and the Moon rise near each other in the middle of the night and are high overhead before dawn. 

Oct. 19: A very thin crescent Moon is very near super-bright Venus in the predawn east.

Oct. 21-22: The Orionid meteor shower peaks. The Orionids are typically a medium-low strength shower producing up to 20 meteors per hour from a dark site. If you are going to observe the Orionids, this is a great year for it. Moonlight will not interfere with observing. It is very close to a new Moon, so the Moon isn’t up for most observers for almost all of the night, and either dark or just the thinnest of crescents shortly before dawn. The Orionids are caused by debris from Comet Halley.

Oct. 21: New Moon

Oct. 23: The thin crescent Moon is close to bright Mercury in the very early evening, but they are very low to the horizon in the glow of dusk, so are hard to see.

Oct. 29: Mercury is at its greatest elongation east, its highest point in the early evening west for this viewing period.