Show Notes
Welcome to episode 223 of the Astrophiz podcasts. October is a fabulous month with lots of highlights for telescopers, astrophotographers, binocular and naked eye observers. We have 'The International Observe the Moon' night, the Orionid Meteor Shower and some fine planetary action. There is also a new comet C/2025 R2 (SWAN)
Comet C/2025 R2 (Swan) is a very recently discovered comet that is around magnitude 7 (which means it is binoculars only), but it is well placed near some very bright guide stars so it will be easy to find. Ian’s Comet R2 page shows where you can find its locations up till October 10, and there is some evidence the nucleus has split. What this means for brightness is uncertain, but it might either get brighter of disintegrate. You can find Ian’s Comet C/2025 R2 (SWAN) page at tinyurl-DOT-com/cometr2
Comet watchers will also hunt for Comet C/2025 A6 (Lemmon) which will be visible to the Southern Hemisphere low in the evening sky from mid-November 2025, with the best chances for viewing in the northern parts of Australia. While the comet will pass Earth in October, it remains a northern hemisphere object during that time; however, observers in the Southern Hemisphere can still catch it after sunset in mid-to-late November.
and finally TCoronaBorealis still hasn’t gone nova, so keep watching it,
More from Astronomy Astrophiz Podcast
What are gravitational waves, and could primordial black holes be dark matter? Astrophysicist Laura Byrne (University of Auckland) explains how the LISA space mission could detect them. Astrophiz podcast Episode 244.
Dr Ian 'Astroblog' Musgrave returns with your October 2026 Sky Guide for Australian skies, including Saturn at opposition (October 4), Mars crossing the Beehive Cluster (M44), the Orionid meteor shower, a daylight Lunar X on the 18th, and the occultation of Elnath (Beta Tauri) on October 29–30.
Is dark matter finally showing itself? In this episode of Astrophiz, Dr Sophia Gad-Nasr — particle cosmologist, science communicator, and creator of @AstropartiGirl — returns for her second appearance on the show (her first was Episode 90, back in 2019) to unpack the tantalising 2.6-sigma signal detected by the LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) dark matter experiment, buried deep underground in South Dakota.
Dr Ian 'Astroblog' Musgrave returns with your essential guide to the September night sky — Venus at its greatest brilliancy (mag -4.5), the Moon's occultation of Antares, and Mercury lining up with Venus and Spica at dusk.
Trevor Barry — the Outback Astronomer — is a world-renowned planetary imager whose backyard observatory in Broken Hill, NSW, produces scientific-grade Jupiter and Saturn data used by NASA. In this episode of Astrophiz, host Brendan O'Brien travels to the outback to sit down with Trevor at his custom-built observatory.