By Bruce Stambaugh, contributor
October has blessed the area with some fantastic and surprising celestial wonders. Last week, the full Hunter Super Moon and the comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS graced our night skies. The comet is still being seen but will soon vanish from our sight.
Earlier in the month, the Aurora Borealis danced in the skies across the northern hemisphere, leading the stellar trifecta. Residents in the southernmost regions, like Arizona and Florida, even saw them.
I didn’t have to go far to view the trio of events. The key was to be aware and to look up. The aurora’s colorful display reminded me of the animated light shows projected onto the American and Canadian Niagara Falls.
However, it’s hard to beat Nature’s heavenly choreography. All I had to do to see the Northern Lights was to step outside my front door. Pinks, reds, and greens played across the northern sky, dimming and dancing for all to see.
I knew the forecasts for the Aurora Borealis were favorable, but I didn’t expect to see such vivid beauty this far south. It was a welcomed surprise that enabled many to cross off seeing the Northern Lights from their bucket list. I wasn’t one of them.
I saw the northern lights before as a young man living in Ohio’s Amish Country. The red curtain of zigzagging brilliance danced and sizzled strangely in the southern sky. I heard an associated zapping sound, but briefly, that sometimes accompanies the aurora.
Next up was October’s Hunter Super Full Moon, the fourth consecutive super full moon this year. October’s was the brightest because it was closer to the Earth than the other super moons. I like to catch the moon rising over Shenandoah National Park, so I headed to CrossKeys, which offers several good views of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Because I wasn’t exactly sure where the moon would appear, I spotted the moon already hovering over the park. I snapped a few long-range shots using the rolling farmland as the foreground.
Then came the comet. Like the Northern Lights, the news media informed us of its arrival. The comet was expected to be its brightest on October 14. Unfortunately, fog, haze, and rain clouds obscured our skyward view.
Thursday, October 17, was our first clear night. My wife and I headed to the local landmark, Mole Hill. It’s an extinct volcanic core, long eroded and now covered with farmed fertile soils on its gradual slopes and a thick mixed forest on the steeper portion of the cone.
Mole Hill’s higher elevation didn’t help us find the comet. A hazy sky over the Allegheny Mountains, 30 miles to the west, was the culprit. We looked and looked but returned home disappointed.
The next night, I had success from the hill behind Eastern Mennonite University in Park View. After viewing photos from my iPhone 14 Pro taken around 7:30 p.m., I spotted a faint streak in the sky. What I couldn’t see with my old naked eyes, my smartphone easily captured for me.
I was ecstatic. Since this comet won’t return to Earth’s neighborhood for another 80,000 years, I definitely wanted to see it.
I took a few more photos and returned home to celebrate with my wife by showing her the sequence of images. Afterward, we went outside, stood in our residential street with no street lights, and found the comet about 30 degrees northeast of Venus, which hugged the horizon.
The next night’s try proved even more successful. I zoomed in with the phone’s long lens and captured more than the comet and its long, fuzzy tale. When I looked at the photo, I realized Starlink was streaking across the sky just northeast of the comet.
October has been good to us so far. I wonder what joyous tricks she’ll offer up by Halloween.
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