November 2007

by Deane Morrison

In the midst of cold, gray November, Mars stands out like a beacon. Our ruddy neighbor appears earlier each evening this month, rising less than two hours after sunset by month's end. It also brightens noticeably as Earth closes in, en route to a Christmas Eve sweep past the fabled Red Planet. Mars, now sojourning among the stars of Gemini, comes up about the same time as Orion, its famous neighbor to the south.

The other bright planets give Mars plenty of room for its big entrance. Jupiter drops very low in the southwest, heading into the sun's afterglow. Saturn, in Leo, rises in the middle of the night and is well up in the southeast at dawn. Though its rings are barely tilted, the planet outshines Regulus, Leo's brightest star, which appears seven or eight degrees to the west. Venus, still a brilliant morning planet, appears below Saturn, and Mercury makes a foray into the predawn sky in the first half of the month.

A waning moon glides through Leo in the first week of November. A fat crescent pushes very close to Regulus on the 3rd, then passes Saturn and ends up, thinner but even more beautiful, next to Venus on the 5th.

This year's Leonid meteor shower could be good, and the way to tell is to look to the east just before midnight on the 17th, when the shower is near its peak. As luck would have it, that's also the time a first-quarter moon sets and Leo lifts its sickle-shaped head above the horizon, spewing meteors in all directions. The Leonids are usually fast and bright, and many leave glowing trails. All we need is clear skies.

A few days later, the waxing moon chases the Pleiades star cluster all night long. An hour before sunset on the 23rd, the almost full moon rises west of the Pleiades. As the night goes by, the moon's orbital motion edges it closer to the Pleiades, and it may graze the cluster low in the west just before the glow of dawn washes out the stars.

This full moon was called the beaver moon by Algonquin Indians, who observed beavers busily preparing their lodges for winter at this time of year. It was also the time to lay in a supply of warm pelts.

The Milky Way arches symmetrically across the evening sky from east to west. Just under the arch and nearly directly overhead, we can make out our nearest large neighbor galaxy, Andromeda, as a faint fuzzy oval. Look about halfway along a line connecting the Great Square of Pegasus to the W-shaped Cassiopeia in the north; Andromeda appears just east of the line. Below the Great Square, the Circlet of Pisces is always fun to find.

The stars will be coming out earlier after standard time returns on the 4th. Clocks should be set back an hour at 2 a.m.