I have used most of my posts displaying astrophotographs I have taken of deep sky objects (DSOs). November is not a great month for additional work in that department. However, once in a while the night sky clears and the casual observer might want to know what’s visible above. So here goes…

Weather permitting, the big show during November will be the Leonid meteor shower. The meteors annually appear, emanating from the constellation Leo, which rises in the east later in the evening. Below is a combined image of the 2001 Leonids from 34 x 2-min exposures, taken with 50mm standard focal lens.

“On Nov. 17, 2009, we expect the Leonids to produce upwards of 500 meteors per hour,” says Bill Cooke of the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center. “That’s a very strong display.”

Since we began this month with a return to Eastern Standard Time, everything will get darker by an hour, so be aware that night-time viewing will be easier for all you early risers.

Jupiter is still king this month. Look for it in the south. You can’t miss it.

Mercury is lost in the light of sunrise.

Mars rises around midnight and is very high in the southeast before dawn. It’s below Gemini’s head stars, Pollux and Castor. Use binoculars to watch Mars near the Beehive Star Cluster. It will be attractive to watch the ice cap change if you do have a scope and are willing to be up that late.

Queen of the morning planets is Venus. I saw it the other morning on a trip into TC. Almost looked like a UFO. I saw another bright object brighter than Venus, but, alas, it was an airplane.

Venus is so bright that it’s easy to spot if you look low in the east 60 to 30 minutes before sunrise.

Saturn, only a hundredth as bright, is above Venus and somewhat to the right. Unless you get up before dawn on a clear morning, have a scope, and know where to look, you probably won’t be able to identify it.

I’ll be anxiously awaiting the return of Saturn in the night sky later in 2010, to watch the reappearance of its slightly-tilted rings. We went through a year of ringless Saturn this year.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 5th, 2009 at 8:23 am and is filed under Ed's Astronomy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.