The new moon is on November 1, 2024. On November 3rd, we fall back to central standard time; that same evening, look for the slender crescent moon two degrees south of Mercury in dusk. The Moon catches up with Venus on November 5th, passing 3.5 degrees south of the brilliant "evening star". The first quarter moon is on November 9th. The waxing gibbous moon is just south of Saturn about sunset on November 10th, a great photo op.
Much of the world will witness an occultation, but for us, a close miss! The Full or Beaver Moon is on November 15th. Mercury is highest east of the sun on the evening of November 16th, 23 degrees behind it. On the outer fringe of the solar system, Uranus is at opposition on November 17th, the same day that much closer Jupiter has the moon passing 5.6 degrees north of Jupiter.
Much closer to home, the Moon passes by Mars on November 20thk some two degrees north of it. The Moon is last quarter on November 23, and back to new on November 1st, the passing of the phase based synodic month. Jupiter will come to opposition on December 7th, rising in the east at sunset.
Mercury is well placed in the SW evening skies the first two weeks of November, but is lost in its glare by Thanksgiving. Venus dominates the SW sky, getting closer and brighter but also shrinking in phase to approach half lit by Christmas.
Mars is still in the morning sky, in Gemini. Jupiter, the largest planet, will reach opposition on December 7th. Saturn will be in the south in Aquarius in the evening sky, with his rings seen almost edge on this year.
While the naked eye, dark adapted by several minutes away from any bright lights, is a wonderful instrument to stare up into deep space, far beyond our own Milky Way, binoculars are better for spotting specific deep sky objects. For a detailed map of northern hemisphere skies, about October 31st visit the www.skymaps.com website and download the map for November 2024; it will have a more extensive calendar, and list of best objects for the naked eyes, binoculars, and scopes on the back of the map. Sky & Telescope has: www.skyandtelescope.com/observing/astronomy-podcasts/.
Setting in the southwest is the teapot shape of Sagittarius, which marks the heart of our Milky Way Galaxy, with Saturn just above the lid of its teapot. The best view of our Galaxy lies overhead now. The brightest star of the northern hemisphere, Vega dominates the sky in the northwest. To the northeast of Vega is Deneb, the brightest star of Cygnus the Swan. To the south is Altair, the brightest star of Aquila the Eagle, the third member of the three bright stars that make the Summer Triangle so obvious in the NE these clear autumn evenings. Use binocs and your sky map to spot many clusters here, using the SkyMap download to locate some of the best ones plotted and described on the back.
Overhead the square of Pegasus is a beacon of fall. South of it is the only bright star of Fall, Fomalhaut. If the southern skies of Fall look sparse, it is because we are looking away from our Galaxy into the depths of intergalactic space. The constellation Cassiopeia makes a striking W, rising in the NE as the Big Dipper sets in the NW. Polaris lies about midway between them. She contains many fine star clusters and nebulae. Much more distant in her daughter Andromeda is the closest large spiral galaxy comparable to our own Milky Way, M-31. This photo of it with two smaller companion galaxies, M-32 (below the nucleus) and M-110 (to upper left) was taken with the new Dwarf 3 digital telescope, now available for $400, with the ability to take telephotos like this as well as wide angle photos of the constellations.
To the northeast, Andromeda’s hero, Perseus, rises. Perseus contains the famed eclipsing binary star Algol, where the Arabs imagined the eye of the gorgon Medusa would lie. It fades to a third its normal brightness for six out of every 70 hours, as a larger but cooler orange giant covers about 80% of the smaller but hotter and thus brighter companion as seen from Earth. south. Look at Perseus’ feet for the famed Pleiades cluster to rise, a sure sign of bright winter stars to come. This is probably the best sight in the sky with binoculars, with hundreds of fainter stars joining the famed "Seven Sisters" with 10x50 binocs.
In addition to the stars, we see this cluster passing through a nearby cloud of dust and gas and the stars having their blue light reflected by the dust particles, in the same way our sky in daytime is turned blue by tiny molecules in our atmosphere that in "Rayleigh Scattering" selectively scatter the shorter blue waves, while allowing the reds of sunset and total lunar eclipses to pass through our atmosphere.
To the NE, yellow Capella, a giant star the same temperature and color as our much smaller Sun, rises at 7 as November begins along the northeastern horizon. It is the fifth brightest star in the sky, and a beacon of the colorful and bright winter stars to come in December. South of the pentagon of Auriga, we find bright Jupiter, near orange Aldeberan, the eye of Taurus the Bull, rising in the NE about 7 by mid November.
