The Last Quarter moon is Nov. 5. The waning crescent moon passes a degree north of brilliant Venus at dawn on Nov. 9. The moon is new on Nov. 13. The waning crescent moon will set well before the peak for the Leonid meteor shower on the morning of Nov. 17. The First Quarter Moon is on Nov. 20, passing three degrees south of Saturn. The waxing gibbous moon passes three degrees north of Jupiter on Nov. 25. The Full Moon, the Beaver Moon, is on Nov. 27.
Mercury is lost in the Sun’s glare in November. Venus dominates the dawn, a shrinking crescent that will appear half-lit in December. Mars is in conjunction with the Sun on Nov. 17 directly behind the Sun. This is the month for Jupiter, which comes to opposition on Nov. 2. It now lies in Aries. Saturn is in the south in Aquarius in the evening sky.
Callisto, the outermost Galilean, can just miss Jupiter’s poles currently, but smaller, inner Io (orange to the left edge) and Europa always pass directly in front of and behind Jupiter’s disk every orbit. Their dark umbral shadows will be almost exactly behind them near Nov. 2 and opposition, with the earth between the Sun and Jupiter. Io and Europa are both similar to our own moon in size, but much brighter, with fresh surfaces of sulfur (Io) and water ice (Europa) instead of the dark volcanic basalt of our lunar mare.
For a detailed map of northern hemisphere skies, visit the Skymaps website and download the map for November 2023.
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 northeast 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 west, rising in the northeast as the Big Dipper sets in the northwest. Polaris lies about midway between them. She contains many nice star clusters for binocular users in the outer arm of our Milky Way, extending to the northeast now. Her daughter, Andromeda, starts with the northeast corner star of Pegasus’’ Square and goes northeast with two more bright stars in a row. It is from the middle star, beta Andromeda, that we proceed about a quarter of the way to the top star in the west of Cassiopeia and look for a faint blur with the naked eye. M-31, the Andromeda Galaxy, is the most distant object visible to the naked eye. South of it, and visible in binoculars, is M-33 in Triangulum, photographed below by my Unistellar eVscope eQuinox 1 at the Pensacola Airport.
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 of 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. 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. To the northeast, yellow Capella, a giant star the same temperature and color as our much smaller Sun, rises at 7 p.m. 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.
On the Saturdays of the first and third quarter moon, we continue our cooperation with the Florida State Parks at Big Lagoon State Park. Here the emphasis is on learning to observe and photograph the night sky with binoculars or your own telescopes and smartphones or other cameras. Normal entry fees ($6 per car) to Big Lagoon still apply, and remember to check in the front gate before it closes at sunset. All EAAA events are free and open to the public.
For more information on the Escambia Amateur Astronomers, visit us on Facebook or contact our sponsor, Lauren Rogers at Pensacola State College; e-mail her at lrogers@pensacolastate.edu. For more on our solar eclipse glasses and plans for the solar eclipse coming up on April 8, 2024, contact l Dr. Wayne Wooten by email at johnwaynewooten@gmail.com. Also, contact him for telescope recommendations for Christmas.
