What's Worth Watching in the Sky This November

[THE CLOCKS] An hour earlier, a darker evening.

• The clocks went back an hour on Sunday, November 1st, and the sky's schedule moved with them.
• In Austin, where we worked out the times, sunset jumped from 6:44 p.m. on Saturday to 5:44 p.m. on Sunday, and by the end of the month the sun will be gone by 5:30.
• Put more usefully, the hour taken from the evening comes back as an hour of full dark before dinner, and the morning sky, for anyone up before 6:30, is as crowded with planets as it has been all year.

[THE MONTH] Planets, showers, and a supermoon.

• There is no eclipse this November and no comet bright enough to find without a telescope, so the month's story is a simple one: four planets gathering before dawn, a lone planet holding the evening, two meteor showers that happen to get a dark Moon, and a supermoon to close.
• The best of it comes in the middle, when Jupiter and Mars nearly touch.

[MORNINGS] The action is before dawn.

• The mornings are where the action is, in the 45 minutes to an hour before sunrise.
• Jupiter is the steady bright one, high in the southeast in the constellation Leo, outshone only by Venus and the Moon.

[THE PAIRING] Jupiter and Mars, a thumb apart.

• Mars is the faint orange point climbing toward it, and the two draw together through the first half of the month until they pass about 1.2 degrees apart on the mornings of November 15th and 16th, close enough to cover both with a thumb at arm's length.
• That is the pairing last month's column promised, and it is the one morning this month worth losing sleep for.

[REGULUS] A tight group on the 30th.

• Mars keeps moving afterward, toward Regulus, Leo's brightest star, and by the morning of November 30th the Moon joins Jupiter, Mars, and Regulus in a tight group.

[THE MOON] A guide to the planets.

• The Moon makes the planets easy to find.
• On the morning of November 7th, a thin crescent sits beside Venus and the bright star Spica, low in the east before sunrise, and at the end of the month it returns to Jupiter and Mars.
• None of this needs equipment.
• It needs a clear eastern horizon and an alarm.

[VENUS] Back in the morning sky.

• Venus is the reason the morning sky is suddenly full.
• It passed between Earth and the Sun in late October, which moved it from the evening sky to the morning sky, and it climbs higher before dawn every day this month, reaching its greatest morning brilliance on November 29th, when it is far brighter than any star.
• It peaks then rather than at its closest because Venus shows phases like the Moon.
• Nearest to us it is a thin crescent, farther away it is fuller but smaller, and late November is the balance point.

[MERCURY] One of the year's better chances.

• Mercury joins last.
• It passes the Sun on November 4th, reappears in the second week, and reaches its widest separation from the Sun on the evening of November 20th, which makes the mornings of roughly the 17th through the 25th the time to catch it, very low in the east-southeast below Venus about 40 minutes before sunrise.
• It is the planet most people have never knowingly seen, because it never strays far from the Sun, and this is one of the better chances of the year.

[SATURN] The lone evening planet.

• The evening sky has one planet, and it is a good one.
• Saturn, which was at its closest to Earth in early October, is high in the south by 9 p.m. all month, a steady yellowish point that does not twinkle the way stars do.
• Its rings are still tilted only a few degrees toward us, so in a small telescope they look like a thin line through the planet rather than the full hoop of the postcards.
• That tilt opens up again over the next few years.

[URANUS] The extra credit.

• Uranus is the extra credit.
• It reaches opposition on November 25th, meaning Earth sits between it and the Sun, so it rises at sunset and is as bright as it gets.
• At magnitude 5.6 it is just beyond what most eyes can find unaided, but binoculars show it as a pale greenish point in Taurus, near the Pleiades cluster.
• If you have never seen it, this is the week.

[THE TAURIDS] Slow and bright.

• The Moon cooperates with both of the month's meteor showers, which it rarely does.
• The Taurids are a slow, scattered stream that peaks twice, its southern branch in the first week of November and its northern branch around the 11th and 12th.
• They rarely produce more than five meteors an hour, but they are famous for fireballs, slow and bright, because the debris hits the atmosphere at a relatively lazy 17 miles per second, and the new Moon on the 9th leaves both peaks dark.

[THE LEONIDS] Fast and brief.

• The Leonids are the opposite kind of shower, fast and brief, the dust of comet Tempel-Tuttle striking the air at about 44 miles per second, among the fastest meteors of the year.
• Expect perhaps 15 an hour at best under a truly dark sky, and usually fewer, after midnight on the nights of November 16th and 17th, once the young Moon has set and the patch of sky in Leo the meteors seem to come from is climbing.

[SUPERMOON] The Beaver Moon, November 24th.

• Then the month closes with a Moon.
• The full Moon of November 24th is the Beaver Moon, named for the season when beavers settle into their lodges for winter and when fur trappers once set their traps for the thick winter pelts.
• It comes at 8:53 a.m.
• Central time, and it is a supermoon, meaning full phase lands within a day or so of the Moon's closest approach in its oval orbit.
• The difference is real but modest, about 6 percent larger and 13 percent brighter than an average full Moon, and more noticeable in photos than to the eye.
• It is the first supermoon since January, and the first of two in a row, with the Cold Moon on December 24th to follow.
• That night it rises beside the Pleiades, a few degrees from the cluster, which gives you something to look at while the Moon washes out everything else.

[DATES TO KEEP] If you keep only a few dates.

• If you keep only a few dates, make them these.
• Set the alarm early for Jupiter and Mars on the 15th and 16th.
• Look east on the 7th for the Moon, Venus, and Spica.
• Try Mercury from the 17th.
• Give Saturn an evening, and the Leonids one late night.
• And when the Beaver Moon comes up on the 24th, remember that the clocks did not change the sky, only the hour we call it.
• The planets will keep their appointments either way.