Caoimhín's Content

As we continue to move later in the month, we are now just past the date where a lot of the cool stuff happened. We are just past the 17th, a little, which is around the time that Mercury had its greatest elongation and it’s the date where the Leonids would have peaked. AS such, we can now begin looking forward into December.

According to the numbers I’m seeing in Stellarium, Jupiter isn’t quite at opposition yet. By looking at how full Jupiter is, we can see it reaching 100% full there over the next couple of days. Although planets that are further form the Sun than the Earth are always roughly full, the side facing the Earth must be the side facing the Sun if we are closer to the Sun, it isn’t exact. When Jupiter is making a right angled triangle with the Earth and the Sun, a little bit of Jupiter’s night time side is visible along its edge. By waiting until Jupiter is exactly 100% full, we can tell that it must be lining up with the Earth and the Sun. This does make the planet look a little brighter, Jupiter should have an opposition magnitude of -2.70 and I’m seeing it in Stellarium at -2.80, definitely pretty close to the magnitude we’d expect at opposition. Based on these numbers, it looks like Jupiter’s opposition is coming a little bit later in the month than I had originally thought. All that opposition means is that the planet is directly behind us with respect to the Sun. This is the exact same as a Full Moon and all of the stuff we’d expect of a Full Moon to do, Jupiter does when it’s 100% full, as do all of the planets when they’re at opposition. Looking at Jupiter right at the end of November, at just 10:30, we can see the Great Red Spot pointing towards us, along a few of the smaller moons around Jupiter, with a sufficiently large telescope. Even with a smaller telescope all four of the Galilean Moons are visible laid out around Jupiter. An arrangement like that looks good even when Jupiter isn’t at opposition, and because Jupiter is at opposition it’s going to be at its brightest and at its closest to us. Furthermore, just like a Full Moon, it will be with us for the entire night. Jupiter will be rising when the Sun sets and setting just as the Sun rises. This does mean that we’re going to be losing Jupiter in the morning and while gaining Jupiter in the evening as we continue later in the year.

Jupiter goes behind Stellarium’s inconveniently placed tree as the Sun rises, but as we move later into the year and further into next month it will set before sunrise. By the 19th of December at least, Jupiter’s gone quite a bit before the Sun rises. It will still be reasonably dark at 7:30 by then and Jupiter’s already after setting. Also by then we will see Mercury coming up in the morning. Mercury, even from the city, is visible at just 7:30. If we keep pushing forward into December, Mercury reaches its greatest elongation a little before Christmas morning and then stays with us, again even in the city, until very nearly 8 o’clock. Even still, Mercury never gets particularly high in the sky, it is always a tough planet to spot. I am confident in saying that Mercury is the toughest of the planets visible to the naked eye to actually lay eyes on. Even though Uranus is only sort of visible to the naked eye. Uranus is right on the edge of what we can see without assistance, if you are in a dark countryside sky you may be able to see Uranus with the naked eye. However, even if you need to use a telescope or binoculars, Uranus is there almost all night at the moment, it’s there in total darkness, something that will never happen with Mercury. Of course, we do have Jupiter with us all night at the moment. If we come back to sunset, Jupiter is still under the horizon in November, but if we move forward into December again, Jupiter will already be above the horizon as the Sun sets. This means that we will have the brightest planet and the second brightest planet all in the sky together once we’re through to sunset in December.

As I mentioned, the Leonid meteor shower had its peak on the 17th. If we move a little bit closer to the morning time the Leonid radiant will come up. Although the Leonids peaked on the 17th, they do technically continue running towards the end of November. Their peak has passed but we do have more meteor showers coming up in December and peaking closer to the end of November as well. Moving forward we will see the Moon moving through or near the radiants of a lot of those meteor showers, some of them on the nights they will peak. The Moon will interfere while it’s full, but we can see that there’s several meteor showers there coming and going over the course of early December when the Moon will be new. It may seem exciting that we’ve got 4 or 5 meteor showers all going on at the same time, but some of these will be quite minor meteor showers. We will look more at the values, the amount of meteors we can expect to get from those showers, as we move a little bit further into December. Thankfully, the peak of the Monocerotids is still coming, they’re peaking on the 21st of November. Their peak is still upcoming, and thi9s meteor shower has quite a variable amount of meteors, a very big variation from 5 to 400 per hour. Even if we only get a few meteors in the sky form the Monocerotids, they will be adding to the background rate of meteors that we always see, such as those from the Antihelion point. We might also get some of the November Orionids, they will peak just a little bit later in the month again, and thankfully they’re peaking mostly without the Moon. On the 21st the Moon is going to be up with the radiant of Monocerotids, but it’s important to remember that the radiant is just where the meteors radiate from. As they can appear anywhere in the sky, we could see meteors before the radiant or the Moon rises. Even if they are on almos the opposite side of the sky, their tails can still point back to the radiant of the Monocerotids. We would probably see more when the radiant is above the horizon, but you should still see some at least.

All of that so far is from the city. We are moving later and as we move later into November here, we can see that Venus is really prominent in the evening, it’s sticking with us all through the month. Right at the end of November, Jupiter’s already coming up as the Sun sets, so it’s definitely around its opposition. We will shift our view into the countryside just to see how this would look in a darker sky. Going from early November to late November of course not too much is going to change, but as we are approaching the winter solstice the sunset is going to be getting earlier and earlier. At just 6 o’clock it’s already reasonably dark in the countryside. Once the sunset glow fades away the glow of the Milky Way will be visible by 6 o’clock or so if you’re in a dark enough sky. By the end of this month the Moon won’t be interfering with us too much. We can’t quite see Mars and Venus at the same time in November, but we should be able to pull that off a little bit later once we get into December. We can see Saturn setting still quite early, soon after midnight. Midnight is still a great time to go looking for the planets in November, even up to 1 o’clock in the morning. The Moon will come up very close to the sunrise and Jupiter will behind the aforementioned tree whether you have light pollution or not.

As Jupiter is at its opposition point for a while, we are going to be able to see Jupiter pretty much all night for quite a while. Taking a closer look at Jupiter and moving through time, Jupiter appears to move against the stars in one direction. Moving forward here it appears to move with the stars, until it turns and goes against the stars in the other direction. When a planet reaches opposition, it does this cool little reversal in the sky. Only the outer planets behave in this way. the inner planets don’t really have an “opposition” in the same way. We can see that reversal of Jupiter’s motion is actually coming up next year. Jupiter will appear to oscillate around the point of it’s opposition because the Earth orbiting the Sun faster than Jupiter. We do have to catch up to Jupiter before we move past Jupiter. If we come back into early November, this is when we were catching up to Jupiter. By late November we’re drawing level with Jupiter at it’s opposition. Following this, we actually start moving past Jupiter and Jupiter will appear to fall backwards in the sky. That’s Jupiter in retrograde, not something that anyone really talks about at all. Venus and Mercury get all the attention when it comes to apparent retrograde motion. Jupiter in retrograde is coming up early next year, something you can point of if you want to bother any of your friends who put stock in astrology. Maybe they will be able to account for Jupiter in retrograde, I don’t know, not too many of my friends put stock in astrology so I haven’t been able to challenge anyone on it, but maybe you will get the chance to.

That’s Jupiter coming up to its opposition point at the end of this month by the looks of it, so that’s one thing that we still have coming to us this month. With the solstice, Mercury coming up in the morning and a bunch of meteor showers, we’ve got even more coming up in December. Particularly around Christmas morning, around the 25th of December, that’s actually going to be a very good time to go stargazing. Of course in many cultures, it’s a time where a lot of people are up early in the morning. Or staying up later at night on Christmas Eve, depending on how you celebrate that time of year. Then again if you celebrate the winter solstice on the 21st, that’s also going to be a fantastic time to go looking for stars and planets. Coming back to sunset in the countryside for not too late in November, we’ll push a little bit later here, just so we can see Jupiter, Saturn and Venus all up at the same time. We’ve been getting plenty of planets in the morning sky for the past couple of months, or at the earliest around midnight, but here we are, three planets all together in the evening sky. That should go up to 4 as we get into late December, so do come back here in December when I will provide updates about the planets at sunset yet again.

I hope you enjoyed this piece, just taking a quick look at some of the things that have happened recently and should happen in December. If you did enjoy this piece then of course please do like it. You can also subscribe to this website and my YouTube channel to support my creation of future videos and articles. With so much coming up, hopefully I’ll see you back here next time.