Star Points for September, 1998; by Curtis Roelle Harvest Moon Has Company The month of October opens with a waxing gibbous moon hanging heavy in the twilight sky. The moon's brightness helps mask two bright naked-eye planets hiding nearby. On the evening of the 4th look to the upper right of the moon for the king of planets, Jupiter. It will be the brightest star-like object in the entire sky. For a special treat view Jupiter with binoculars and you can see up to four tiny moons circling Jupiter. If you look around 9:00 p.m. Io and Europa will be very close together on the right (west) side of Jupiter, with Ganymede and Callisto to the planet's left (east). These four brightest Jovian satellites orbit the planet in periods ranging from 1.77 days (Io) to 16.7 days (Callisto). Most of Jupiter's 16 moons are beyond the reach of amateur telescopes. A small or medium-sized telescope can show some of the dark brown cloud bands decorating Jupiter's upper atmosphere. To the lower left of the moon is the planet Saturn. While fainter than Jupiter, Saturn is unmistakably bright. The ring structure is striking even in small backyard telescopes. Saturn's brightest moon Titan remains on the west side of the planet until the 7th. The brightest of the 18 known Saturnian moons, Titan circles the planet every 15.9 days. On the following night of the 5th the full moon is located midway between Jupiter and Saturn. The full moon closest to the first day of Autumn is commonly called the "Harvest Moon". The harvest moon rises in Westminster at 7:02 p.m. and sets on the morning of the 6th at 7:54 a.m. On the night of the 6th Saturn may be found a short distance to the moon's upper left. October is also the month when we change our clocks from "daylight savings time" to standard time by setting them back an hour in the early morning hours of Sunday, October 25. Despite the promises of politicians who won the vote to adopt daylight time, no daylight was actually saved during the summer. We had extra sunlight at night at the expense of less sunlight in the morning. The amount of daylight would have been the same regardless of whether we set our clocks ahead an hour, back an hour, let them run unchanged, or unplugged.