Caoimhín's Content

Today, we will be taking a quick look ahead to the upcoming month of November to see what we can see in the sky. As I have mentioned frequently in a few of the recent videos, such as when we were discussing comets and then nova that was supposed to occur in September, predicting the future is often difficult. Sometimes however, some objects are reasonably easy to predict. Venus will be visible as the Sun is setting, at least in the early part of November, we will have Saturn with us at sunset and a little later in the night Jupiter will rise. We know when the New Moon is going to occur, on November first and December first, and we know that there is a meteor shower coming up in November as well. Other things are more difficult to predict, the weather being one of them. This is why we always ignore the weather for these pieces. We will look at a perfectly clear sky, even if November can occasionally be cloudy.

We will being still nice and early in the night on the 1st of November. The summer triangle is now definitely over towards the southwest at sunset rather than due south, so it will be setting earlier and earlier as we come up to midwinter. Saturn is still nice and high in the sky, but it will set earlier and earlier as we go through November. At only 7:45, Jupiter will be visible, albeit a little bit low in the sky, but will get higher as the night gets later. The Square of Pegasus and the Andromeda galaxy will also be nice and high in the sky very early in the evening. Even if you are in the city the Andromeda galaxy can be seen through telescopes and binoculars, you just won’t be able to see it with the naked eye.

Continuing forward as we push towards morning time, Jupiter will be joined by Mars at just 10:30. Mars is definitely getting up into the sky before midnight, and by just 11 o’clock Mars should be above a lot of buildings and trees if you have a reasonably clear horizon. The constellation of Orion is also visible before midnight. Uranus will be up somewhere near the Pleiades or the Seven Sisters, which are a little faint from the city but still definitely visible. Pushing further towards morning time won’t bring another planet into the sky. Mercury may be coming back into a sky in November, but in the evening time and a little bit later in November as well. Leo is still nice and clear in the morning with the Sickle of Leo is well above the horizon before the light of the sunrise creeps into the morning sky.

The sunrise at the moment will happen pretty much under The Plough. As The Plough starts to get higher in the sky to the east the Sun will begin to rise and things begin to disappear. At almost 7 o’clock on the 2nd of November, Sirius the brightest star, Jupiter, not the brightest planet but one of the brighter objects, and Mars, will all still visible. If we move forward just to 15th, the middle of November things will stay visible even later. Sirius will set as things get brighter, so Sirius will get more difficult to see, but Jupiter will still be there as late as 7:30 in just the middle of November. If we come back a little bit closer to 7 o’clock, say 7:15, Sirius will be up but very low in the sky. Mars and Jupiter will certainly be visible nice and clear above the horizon.

Now that we’ve come around to the middle of the month, the Moon will be up nice and big, 99.9% full before midnight on the 15th. It looks like we won’t get to see the Moon at 100% full from here in Ireland this month, but the Moon will be very close to 100% full when it rises in November. It will be just 360,000 kilometers away, with that number coming down a little as the Moon rises, although it will drop to 99.8% full. It is close to enough a supermoon, at less than 360,000 kilometers away. Given how many Full Moons have been counted as supermoons lately, there’s a very good chance that this November Moon will be referred to as a supermoon as well. The Full Moon will be very close to Uranus and the Pleiades.

There won’t be an occultation of Uranus this month and we can check that easily if we head out to the countryside, but before we do we’re going to come back to sunset, just at the right time to get Venus in the sky. It’s clear to see that Venus is a brighter than Saturn, it is certainly easier to see as the Sun sets. Mercury would come into the evening sky as we get a little bit later in the month, just not for us here in Ireland. Moving forward to the very end of November and Venus is nice and clear, with Saturn just beginning to be visible, just a little after 5 o’clock. In fact. Venus is probably going to be visible as early as 5, with Saturn appear just a little later. Jupiter will be coming into the sky as the Sun goes down as well. Once we’re through to the end of the month, at not yet even 6 o’clock, there will be three visible planets, four if you count Uranus. All of this will be visible in a sky that will be dark nice and early,

If we face south, the summer triangle will still be towards the southwest, not too different from how we saw it at the beginning of the month. However at beginning of the month we were looking at it much later at night, the sunset is getting earlier so even if the summer triangle appears to be in roughly the same place at sunset, it will be closer to the west for a given time if we were to keep the time the same. Up comes Mars at just a little after 9 o’clock and by 10 o’clock it will be at a more than an observable height in the sky for a telescope. Speeding quickly through to the morning here at the end of the month and the Moon will be too close to new for us see it even as a crescent.

From here we’ll pop out to the countryside and head back to the night of the Full Moon, before we hunt down Mercury. Once you zoom in, Uranus will be revealed, even from a city sky, in Stellarium and in real life this is the case. In Stellarium, with a dark sky at least, Uranus is highlighted automatically. This makes it easier to tell that there will not be an occultation, it looks like the Moon is just a little too high in the sky for that. By the looks of things, the Moon probably will occult the Pleiades, just from a different location on Earth. Once the Full Moon leaves your field-of-view, Stellarium will assume that the Moon is just gone if you’re zoomed in too much, so the effect of its extra light will go away. The Moon will get closer and closer to the Pleiades and they set under the horizon, before they align, so the Moon and the Pleiades aren’t going to have an occultation for us here in Ireland. Later in November when we get a little bit closer to the Full Moon I will check to see where, if anywhere, the occultation will be visible from. Taking a closer look at the Moon itself, just when the Full Moon first rising, and you can see that it’s very close to full. There is just a little bit of unevenness visible there on one side of the Moon, it’s close to 100% full, not exactly. In the case of observing the Moon it’s not going to make too much of a difference, a tiny bit either side of absolutely full is still going to look very bright, very impressive

Coming around to daytime, we’ll get rid of the atmosphere so that we can see Mercury. With no atmosphere, we can look just next to the Sun where Mercury must be. We can also move through time a little bit to make sure that Mercury is at its greatest elongation. Making sure that the Sun is under the horizon and Mercury is over the horizon, turning back on the atmosphere let’s us see, that even if your sky is perfectly clear, you still won’t get to see Mercury. When Mercury and Sun are on either side of the horizon, they both remain very close to the horizon. This is because the the angle is too steep form here in Ireland, the sky is only dark enough for Mercury to be visible when it’s under our horizon. It is pretty far from the Sun here, so the reason we’re not seeing Mercury is just the angle of the ecliptic, if you were living close to the equator Mercury would indeed be visible,

Moving on to meteor showers we will have a look for the Leonids. These meteors radiate from the constellation Leo, hence the name, so we will need to move around towards morning time. By late November, we will still be a little bit before midnight when the front of Leo and the radiant of the Leonids rises. Looking through a couple of days, the maximum peak of shower is on the 17th, which does unfortunately bring the just past full Moon right up into the sky. Even though the zenith hourly rate could get as high as 20 and the local rate here is assuming about 13, any meteors will have to shine through the extra light of the Moon. The exact rate will change over the course of the night, going down over the night of the 17th. Going back to the beginning of the 17th and the rate is a little higher, getting up to a 4-17 meteors an hour. Early in the morning may be a good time to look for the Leonids this year, but that bright Full Moon is still going to hinder our ability to see meteors quite a lot. The Leonids are the meteor shower that can give outstandingly high rates, the highest ever recorded, but it’s not incredibly likely that we’re going to get that this year.

That brings us through the November sky, those are just some of the main points. Even though we won’t get to see Mercury clearly from here in Ireland we will take a closer look at it once the greatest elongation is reached a little bit later in the month. We will take a closer look at the potential occultation of the Pleiades by the Moon, as I’m interested myself to see where that’s visible from. If you’d like to see the eventual pieces dealing with those events, make sure to subscribe to this website and my YouTube channel, and if you enjoyed this video please do like it. Hopefully, I’ll see you back here next time.