Reading the sky, Oct 6
Three hands-on threads for one thin night: the dawn planets, a blue crystal grown over months, and a fanless PC that ended up needing one fan.
Three hands-on threads run through tonight's issue, and the first asks only that you step outside before dawn. EarthSky's October 2026 visible-planets guide, written by Marcy Curran and published on October 5, says Jupiter is the brightest planet in the morning sky, joined by red Mars and by Saturn setting in the west. On the morning of October 6, the guide says, the waning crescent moon lies near Jupiter, Mars and the Beehive star cluster. From parts of southeast Canada, most of the United States, Mexico, the Caribbean and parts of Africa, the moon passes in front of Jupiter around 10 UTC.
The guide carries the month's other dates too. On October 11, it says, Mars crosses the Beehive cluster in the constellation Cancer, among the bright stars Regulus, Pollux and Castor. In the evening sky, Venus and Saturn are visible, with Venus disappearing early in the month and reaching inferior conjunction on October 23-24, ending its prominent evening appearance. Saturn brightens and stays up all night. EarthSky recommends binoculars for star clusters and fainter objects, and points readers to Stellarium Online for exact times from their own location rather than its general charts.
The second thread trades the sky for a jar. Writing on Hackaday on October 5, Maya Posch described how the channel Crystalverse grows large copper sulfate crystals at home, "probably among one of the prettiest crystals you can grow at home." The method starts with a saturated solution made with near-boiling water, with slightly more copper sulfate than will dissolve, so crystallization sites form on the bottom of the jar and pull growth away from the main crystal. A seed crystal then hangs in the solution.
Patience does the rest. Large crystals take months, Posch wrote, during which the temperature has to be held as constant as possible and competing crystals weeded from the bottom of the container. Slower growth gives better results. Copper sulfate can be bought directly, sold as a fungicide or root killer. A home setup of copper scrap and vinegar yields copper acetate, not copper sulfate. The crystal's deep blue depends on water held inside it, and the crystals turn white as they dehydrate.
The third thread is a lesson in what moving heat by hand can and can't do. Fenix Guthrie wrote on October 5 about Billet Labs' attempt at a silent, fanless gaming PC. Modern components, Hackaday notes, are "highly efficient at producing monumental quantities of thermal energy." The builders made the case base from an aluminum block, with thermal paste under the power supply and thermal pads under the motherboard. The block pulled heat well from the motherboard and graphics card. For the water loop they soldered together household copper pipe and stacked three radiators horizontally to encourage natural airflow.
It almost worked. Hackaday reported two problems: water rushing past the pressure gauge made considerable noise, and the stacked radiators alone could not keep the machine cool under a gaming load. Removing the gauge and adding a single 120mm fan between two of the smaller radiators fixed both, and left a quiet gaming PC. The honest failure is the point. Three builds, each a reminder that the sky, a saturated solution and a block of metal reward attention and time more than any shortcut.
Sources
- Visible planets and night sky guide for October · EarthSky, Tonight
- How to Grow a Giant Crystal from Copper Sulfate · Hackaday
- Failing to Make a Fanless PC · Hackaday