Starwatch: The November night sky

The next two weeks, until moonlight intensifies, may be a good time to seek out a dark night sky, as far away as possible from the blight of light pollution. If successful, we can savour the Milky Way as it flows up through Aquila and Cygnus in our SW evening sky and onwards through the zenith towards Cassiopeia, Perseus and Auriga in the NE. It still arches overhead at our map times though by then it stretches from W to E, while by 02:00 it is aligned from NW to SE. The Milky Way, of course, is the glow of countless stars in the plain of our spiral galaxy, also called the Milky Way. Another larger spiral, the Andromeda Galaxy, lies 2.5 million light years away and appears as an oval smudge very high in the SE at the map times. Andromeda lends its leading star, Alpheratz, to the Square of Pegasus which stands in the S above Jupiter. The planet, unmistakable in the ESE at nightfall, transits the S to set in the W six hours after our map times. It dims from mag -2.8 to -2.5 this month and is 45 arcsec wide when it lies below the Moon on the 16th. With both Mercury and Mars hidden in our evening twilight, our other bright-planet interest occurs before dawn. Saturn, mag 0.9 and below the double star Porrima in Virgo, rises in the E by 04:30 tomorrow and before 03:00 on the 30th. Look for it 13° to the left of the waning Moon on Wednesday when its 16 arcsec disc is set within rings measuring 5 by 36 arcsec. Venus is about to emerge as a morning star. It might be glimpsed near the ESE horizon shortly before dawn on Friday, when it lies close to the very slender Moon. By the 30th, though, it rises by 04:30 and is brilliant at mag -4.7 and well up in the SSE alongside Spica in Virgo as dawn approaches. Telescopes and binoculars show its dazzling slender crescent which shrinks from 60 arcsec and only 2% illuminated on Friday to 43 arcsec and 23% sunlit on the 30th. November diary 4th 06h Moon 8˚ S of Saturn: 15h Epoxi probe flyby of Comet Hartley 2 5th 08h Moon 0.2˚ S of Venus 6th 05h New moon 13th 17h First quarter 16th 16h Moon 7˚ N of Jupiter 17th 21h Peak of Leonids meteor shower 19th 06h Jupiter stationary 21st 01h Mercury 1.7˚ S of Mars 21st 17h Full moon 28th 21h Last quarter