NASA's October Sky Guide Goes Spooky: Algol the "Demon Star" and the Witch Head Nebula (Published September 28)
On September 28, NASA's Night Sky Network published its October 2026 Night Sky Notes, "Spooky Stargazing": Algol, the Demon Star in Perseus that dims about every three days, and the Witch Head Nebula near Rigel. What NASA said, and why Algol has the darkest reputation of any star in the occult tradition.
Updated: September 29, 2026, 2:38 PM ET · Sky and culture desk
Contents
NASA's Night Sky Network published its October 2026 Night Sky Notes on September 28, 2026 under the title "Spooky Stargazing." It points to Algol, the "Demon Star" in Perseus, an eclipsing triple-star system that dims from magnitude 2.1 to 3.4 about every three days and is visible to the naked eye in the northeast after 9 PM, and to the Witch Head Nebula (IC 2118), a reflection nebula about 900 light-years away that needs a large telescope or a camera.
NASA's Night Sky Network published "October's Night Sky Notes: Spooky Stargazing" on September 28, 2026, featuring Algol and the Witch Head Nebula.
Source/tradition: science.nasa.gov, Night Sky Network, Kat Troche, 2026-09-28
Algol dims from magnitude 2.1 to 3.4 about every three days because two stars of the triple system eclipse each other; the period is 2.87 days.
Source/tradition: NASA Night Sky Notes; Sky & Telescope, The Minima of Algol
The Witch Head Nebula is a reflection nebula about 900 light-years away lit by Rigel; the Witch's Broom is part of the Veil Nebula about 2,000 light-years away.
Source/tradition: NASA Night Sky Notes; NASA Hubble Caldwell 34 page
Algol (Caput Algol) is one of the fifteen Behenian fixed stars in Agrippa's Three Books of Occult Philosophy, linked to the diamond and black hellebore and to a protective talisman.
Source/tradition: Agrippa, De occulta philosophia (1533), I.32 and II.47
That Algol's dimming affects people, or that a ward set at its minimum works, is not established.
Source/tradition: No scientific evidence; tradition only
VERIFIED = verifiable in scientific or official sources · TRADITIONAL = historically or culturally recorded · LIVED PRACTICE = widely practiced, experiential knowledge · NOT PROVEN = spiritual interpretation, not scientifically established.
On September 28, NASA's Night Sky Network published its October 2026 edition of Night Sky Notes under the title "Spooky Stargazing," pointing skywatchers to two objects with a long occult history: Algol, the "Demon Star" in Perseus that visibly dims about every three days, and the Witch Head Nebula near Rigel. The star is a naked-eye target in the northeastern sky after 9 PM; the nebula needs a large telescope or a camera.
What NASA published
The monthly Night Sky Notes column, written by Kat Troche for NASA's Night Sky Network of amateur astronomy clubs, opens with the star also known as "The Ghoul": Algol, in the constellation Perseus. NASA notes that in Greek mythology the star marks the blinking eye of the gorgon Medusa, whose severed head Perseus carries across the sky. The blinking is real. Algol is a triple-star system in which two stars orbit each other and eclipse one another, so the system drops from magnitude 2.1 to a dimmer 3.4 "about every three days," then brightens again. NASA illustrates this with a light curve recorded by its TESS planet-hunting satellite, which shows the regular dips.
The column's finder tip: locate Cassiopeia and Andromeda in the northeastern sky after 9 PM, then use the star Almach in Andromeda as a guide to Algol. Because Almach and Algol are of similar brightness, NASA suggests comparing the two with binoculars or a small telescope to catch Algol in the act of fading. The second object is the Witch Head Nebula, IC 2118, a reflection nebula about 900 light-years away between Eridanus and Orion, lit by the bright star Rigel. NASA is candid that it cannot be seen with the naked eye; large-aperture telescopes under dark skies or a few hours of astrophotography are required. And, the column adds, "what is a witch without their broom": the Witch's Broom is part of the Veil Nebula in Cygnus, a supernova remnant about 2,000 light-years away, according to NASA's Hubble Caldwell catalog entry.
| Object | What it is | How to see it |
|---|---|---|
| Algol (Beta Persei) | Triple-star system; two stars eclipse each other; magnitude 2.1 to 3.4 | Naked eye, northeast after 9 PM; compare with Almach |
| Witch Head Nebula (IC 2118) | Reflection nebula about 900 light-years away, lit by Rigel | Large telescope, dark sky, or astrophotography |
| Witch's Broom (Caldwell 34) | Part of the Veil Nebula supernova remnant in Cygnus, about 2,000 light-years away | Telescope; overhead in the evening in early autumn |
Figures from NASA Night Sky Notes (September 28, 2026) and NASA's Hubble Caldwell 34 page.
Why a government sky guide is news for us
NASA's outreach columns rarely borrow the vocabulary of the occult, and this one does it on purpose for the Halloween month. That is a small cultural marker: the agency is meeting the public where October already lives, with witches, demons and ghouls, and using them as a door into real astrophysics. For readers of this magazine, the objects it picks are not random spookiness. Algol has the darkest reputation of any star in the Western tradition.
The name comes from the Arabic ra's al-ghul, "the head of the ghoul." Ptolemy listed it in the second century as the bright star in the Gorgon's head. Hebrew tradition called it the head of Satan, and Chinese astronomers placed it in a "mausoleum" asterism next to a "piled-up corpses" group. In medieval and Renaissance astrological magic, Caput Algol was one of the fifteen Behenian fixed stars: Agrippa's Three Books of Occult Philosophy (1533) assigns it the diamond and black hellebore, and describes a talisman said to make its bearer bold, protect the body, and turn witchcraft back on its sender. Astrologers to this day treat Algol, at about 26 degrees of Taurus, as the most feared fixed star, tied to "losing one's head," while modern writers such as Bernadette Brady have re-read it as raw, suppressed feminine rage, Medusa's own story.
What it means spiritually
What follows is interpretation, not astronomy. The traditions above disagree about Algol, and that disagreement is the teaching. To the Greeks it was a monster's eye; to the magicians of Agrippa's time it was the strongest protective star in the sky, precisely because it was dangerous. A star that blinks on a fixed schedule is a good emblem for the month ahead: the "eye" closes, the light drops by more than half, and a few hours later it is back, unchanged. Nothing is lost in the dimming. Medusa's gaze turned men to stone, but her severed head on Athena's shield became the Gorgoneion, the classical world's most common ward against evil, often named as an ancestor of the evil-eye charms still sold from Greece to Brooklyn. The Witch Head, too, only appears because a brighter star shines on it. Both are Samhain images: the frightening thing seen clearly becomes the thing that protects.
What you can do now
- Find Algol this week. Face northeast after 9 PM local time, find the W of Cassiopeia, follow NASA's star-hop through Andromeda to Almach, then to Algol in Perseus. Note whether it looks as bright as Almach. On another night it may not.
- Catch a minimum on purpose. Use Sky & Telescope's Minima of Algol tool for the next dip in your time zone, and watch the star fade and recover over an evening. It is one of the few celestial changes you can see with your own eyes in a single night.
- Turn the watch into a small rite. If you work with protection, Algol's dimming has been used for centuries as a time to set a ward: a stone in the pocket, a line drawn around the house, a word spoken at the minimum. Keep it simple and keep it yours.
- Photograph the Witch Head. Rigel rises late in the evening in early October; astrophotographers with a tracking mount can start their Halloween image now, following NASA's note that a few hours of exposure are enough.
- Read the ancestors of the evil eye. The Gorgon's head is where the charm begins; our guide to the older Halloween divinations shows how much of October's folklore comes from the same roots.
Pairs well with: Black Obsidian Comfort Stone, the traditional pocket ward for shadow work and protection.
Sources
- NASA Science, Night Sky Network, Kat Troche: "October's Night Sky Notes: Spooky Stargazing," published September 28, 2026, 6:48 PM ET. science.nasa.gov/…/spooky-stargazing
- NASA, Hubble Caldwell Catalog: Caldwell 34, the Veil Nebula ("Witch's Broom"), Cygnus, about 2,000 light-years. science.nasa.gov/…/caldwell-34
- Sky & Telescope, "The Minima of Algol" (period 2.87 days, magnitude 2.1 to 3.4, about two hours near minimum, several hours to fade and rebrighten; minima calculator). skyandtelescope.org/observing/the-minima-of-algol
- Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, De occulta philosophia libri tres (Cologne, 1533), Book I ch. 32 and Book II ch. 47 (the Behenian stars and the image of the Head of Algol).
- Ptolemy, Almagest, star catalogue, constellation Perseus (the Gorgon's head); Bernadette Brady, Brady's Book of Fixed Stars (1998), entry on Algol.
- In the magazine: Draconid meteor shower 2026 · Orionid meteor shower 2026
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The spiritual readings in this article are tradition and lived practice, not scientifically proven. Cover image: NASA/JPL-Caltech, WISE infrared view of the Witch Head Nebula (public domain), cropped and rotated.