The September equinox is in just a couple of days, and for the rest of September, going all the way through the end of October, there is a greater connection between the solar wind and Earth's magnetic field. This means that solar storm impacts trigger more powerful geomagnetic storms here on Earth, and this is especially true because, right now, we are in solar cycle 25 maximum. This is the strongest maximum period going back to solar cycle 23 in 1999-2201.
Now, the interesting thing, on top of this already enhanced ability to have strong geomagnetic storms on Earth, is that there are a variety of unusual astronomical occurrences that are all converging together for October. So often, what we see in history is that we have unusual astronomical things occur during pivotal moments in history. In this video, we are going to explore the fact that Earth is getting a second mini moon in October, there could very well be a daylight-visible comet in our night sky this October, there is an interesting pivotal planetary geometry with the four outer gas giants this October, and we may even see a naked-eye nova explosion.
Hi everyone, and welcome back to the channel! If you're new here, I'm your host, Stefan Burns. On this channel, we cover space weather, Earth geophysics, geologic events, and we also dive into the realm of metaphysics and everything that entails.
If you like the sound of that, then please subscribe. We'll start today's video with our sun because this is the very well-known factor that occurs every single September and October: the Russell-McPherron effect, where there is a greater connection between the solar wind and Earth's magnetic field due to their orientation vectors. So here we have the sun behind me, and this is going from September 20th to 21st.
Right now, solar activity is actually quite low; we have gone quite a bit down from the highs of August, where we set a new record for sunspots, and now we are a little bit in a lull period after coming out of a G3 and then a follow-up G4 geomagnetic storm. So right now, at this moment going into the September equinox, solar activity is low, but it very well could ramp back up for October, and this could trigger powerful solar storm impacts on our planet and, as a result, powerful geomagnetic storms which disrupt the global energies, cause auroras, and so much more. So let's dive into these rare and unusual celestial phenomena that are occurring.
The first unusual astronomical event that's occurring in October is the fact that Earth now has a second mini moon: this is asteroid 2024 PT5. It is 33 ft in diameter, too dim to see with the naked eye because it is very small, but we see that it flies in here and then swings in close to Earth, entering into a moonlike orbit for about two months, going from the beginning of October through the end of November before eventually breaking away and continuing on its normal orbit around the Sun. The yellow section represents that moonlike orbit; we see its full orbit over here, very similar to Earth.
It has a slight inclination to it, so the blue line represents Earth's orbit, and we'll see that it starts off down below the Sun-Earth plane, the ecliptic plane, but then it does swing up here, and that's actually where it enters into that mini moon phase when the two are close together. So this is a spiral where it's starting below, then spiraling up, and then continuing on above in a positive inclination. We can see over here how it has that positive inclination; the white line is above the ecliptic plane.
So this is quite rare; this doesn't occur every single day. We are noticing that we get these second mini moons more often because we're observing them more frequently. So it's not unusual to see this happen every 5-10 years or so, but this is occurring from the beginning of October through the end of November.
So in and of itself, that's already a cool and interesting kind of unusual event to occur. But we also have a comet that's appearing, and comets traditionally have been the heralds and harbingers of great change on our planet. The appearance of comets visible to the naked eye has long been linked to significant changes in society, political structures, rule, law, and order.
The history is absolutely fascinating; they were seen as great heralds and harbingers of change in the past. We have a visible naked-eye comet that will be in our sky in October, perhaps even visible during daylight hours. This is Comet C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan ATLAS.
Here we have the light curve of the Tsuchinshan ATLAS comet, and we see that back in 2023, when it was discovered, it had an apparent magnitude of positive 18 or so. Since then, it has gone up; it stabilized here at about positive 11 in its apparent magnitude, still too dim to see with the naked eye, and then we see based off its orbit, its light curve, and its expectations for the apparent magnitude. This shows it going all the way to about -4, even -5 apparent magnitude around October 12th.
Anywhere in that zone (10th, 12th, 14th, 16th) it's going to be very, very bright, and then it'll start to dip back down as it travels further away. The reason why it's going to be so bright is that there is an envelope of dust around this comet—the coma—and so there's going to be forward scattering of light by that comet. The best time to view will be during the evening after the sun has set.
The comet will still be in the sky, it'll pick up some of that sunlight, and then reflect it back to us, so we will see it very nicely, and it'll be very, very bright. This is the expected light curve; this isn't guaranteed to happen, but we do see that we already have apparent magnitudes in that range. Positive 4.
5 range, uh, going back to the middle of September, and so it's probably already positive 4 or so as I'm filming this, and it's going to continue going up until it gets to that very bright, naked-eye visible status in the negative magnitude range, making it one of the brightest objects in the night sky. Here is where it's estimated its brightness to be for October 14th if you're looking West in the evening, and then by the end of October, it'll be dimming out and fading. In addition to this Mini Moon, we also have a very bright, naked-eye comet that we will have in October.
But in addition to all this, we also have significant planetary geometry that's forming between the outer gas giants in our solar system, and we may even have a nova explosion. Not only do we have a naked-eye visible comet and a Mini Moon, and a stronger chance for geomagnetic storms in October, but we also have this planetary geometry forming with the outer gas giants. I talked about this in my last video; I'll link that in this video's description if you want to give it a watch.
I'll just touch on it lightly here, but what we see is that we have Jupiter here, Uranus there, and then we have, uh, Neptune and Saturn there. So, uh, three of these planets you can see with the naked eye. You can see Jupiter and Uranus with the naked eye; Jupiter is very bright, Uranus is pretty dim, but it is possible to see it.
I've seen it before with my naked eye, even with some light pollution, if you know exactly where to look. You can spot it if you have good eyes. Uh, and then Neptune and Saturn—Neptune's a little too dim to see with the naked eye, but if you have a telescope then you should be able to lock into that if it is of sufficient quality.
But regardless of our ability to see it, there is this geometry emerging where you have this slope there, that slope there, and they are symmetric to each other. They're also right now approximately in a square configuration as it relates to the angles as viewed from Earth. Uh, so these are fairly close together.
Jupiter and Uranus and Neptune and Saturn are even closer together at this moment in time. There is a great conjunction between Jupiter and Uranus in April 2024. There is going to be a great conjunction between Neptune and Saturn in 2026, and they will almost be conjunct, only 13 arc minutes apart, in 2025.
So this planetary geometry here is speaking to the significant conjunction cycles and the synodic cycles that these outer gas giants have, and we're having them occur back to back in 2024, 2025, and 2026—all during this solar maximum period. We have this geometry showing up really nicely in October; after that point, it starts to break off because Saturn starts to move, and Jupiter starts to move faster ahead as well. It also wasn't exactly configured as nicely earlier in the year because Saturn was further back and Jupiter was also conjunct Uranus and not in this nice symmetrical alignment.
A lot of people have been talking about this planetary geometry. If you'd like to hear what I have to say about it more, you can watch my video, but it's just another factor that is kind of unusual on top of everything else that's been discussed. Finally, there may also be a nova explosion in the night sky that we will all see this October.
One of the interesting astronomical observations that has been made is that certain binary star systems have recurring nova explosions, and so this is fairly common when you have a red gas giant and then a white dwarf star. What happens is the white dwarf accumulates solar mass and material, and then at a fairly regular frequency, it then explodes that off its surface in this nova explosion. Now, we noticed a nova explosion from a binary star system about 3,000 light-years away in 1946; this is T CrB.
The estimates for that recurrence interval have it lining up to about 2024 for the next nova explosion, and so astronomers have been waiting and watching for this nova explosion all spring and summer. The original estimate was that it would happen from March to September. Well, it still could happen in September, but we're getting very close now to the beginning of October, and this has a fairly regular recurrence interval.
So it is possible for this recurring nova explosion to occur in October of this year in addition to everything else that's been talked about. What will happen is T CrB will brighten from an apparent magnitude of plus 10 all the way to plus 2, which is just as bright as the North Star. So this will be visible to anyone in the night sky in the northern hemisphere if it goes off, and everyone is waiting for that.
Here we have the light curve for T CrB, and we see this huge spike in brightness in 1946 when it released that nova explosion. Even from 3,000 light-years away, we were able to see that light, and the apparent brightness shot up dramatically. You can see that this is a fairly transient fast event; it goes up and back down within a month.
Then there was this kind of, uh, sine wave that occurred afterward, but we see how the magnitude back in 1946 was about positive 1 and went all the way up to about plus 3. So this is what happened in 1946. It's very likely to happen this year; it could happen next year.
Of course, uh, who's to say exactly what the recurrence interval is for this nova explosion, whether there is some wiggle room to that? But it's likely to occur in 2024, and it was most likely to occur going from March to September. So that gives it a higher probability—very likely to occur in October.
And here's the location for T CrB right now; it's too dim to see. With the naked eye, we see the different constellations. Here, most notably, this is Hercules.
Right below Hercules is Corona Borealis; this is the crown, and we see T CrB there just off to the side. So when this Nova does occur, whenever that is, it's going to brighten quite dramatically and be very, very bright in the night sky—one of the brightest stars in the sky—because it'll be in apparent magnitude of about plus three, plus two, perhaps even brighter, maybe a little dimmer. But regardless, when that Nova explosion occurs, it is a dramatic but very brief transient brightening event.
That could also line up in October. I think that's likely to occur just because we have all this other weird stuff happening in October, and I think there is some significance to this. I already think that October is going to be a very foundational, pivotal month for us in general.
We see a lot of stuff happening as it relates to the United States. If you follow astrology, you know that there are a lot of significant transits and aspects that are occurring right now for the United States. If you'd like to learn more about that, then I'll direct you to my buddy Dan Weitz and his channel, World Astrology Report.
He dives into some of the significant astrological energy right now as it relates to the United States and our presidential election. I'm not going to go any further than that, but we're already seeing October shaping up to be a crazy month—not only because of the Russell-McPherron effect and the potential of stronger geomagnetic storms. We just came off of a really high sunspot number in August, likely to bounce out of that September low going into October.
But we also have this Mini Moon; we have a bright, naked-eye-visible comet that will be in our night sky in October. We have this interesting square planetary geometry in the night sky in October, and we may also have this Nova explosion synchronized with all that. This is a great culmination and convergence of these unusual astronomical factors, which in and of themselves are already quite odd and could be seen, for example, as a herald of change.
Together, I think it's mixing together and creating a stew that we don't even know what it's going to be yet. So if you'd like to stay apprised of the situation, I'm here, your space weatherman, Stefan Burns. Please subscribe to the channel; I'll be releasing regular updates, as I always do, as to what's happening with our sun, our space physics, and the more archetypal energies, you could say.
I hope to see you around! Please like the video, help this channel grow, and I'll see you all in the next video.
