Do You Know Why?
2 The owner doesn't support my candidate.
3 FR won't "upgrade" to "Like" buttons and blinky crap.
4 Someone else will donate.
5 My friend was zotted.
6 I lost my job and have no income.
Posted on 11/17/2011 2:38:33 PM PST by BenLurkin
November starts (for me) the most exciting sky-watching season of the year.
To start with, by the end of the month we’ll again have two evening “stars” visible. Jupiter (in Aries) has been prominent for the last month and is now reaching “opposition” (opposite the Sun). Venus is beginning to emerge from the Sun and, by month’s end, it too will be prominent and will get brighter and more noticeable for the next several months.
In the eastern sky are the Pleiades (the Seven Sisters) and Aldebaran in Taurus, the so-called “eye of the bull.”
Aldebaran, Venus and Jupiter are the brightest objects in the night sky just now except for the Moon.
Other Zodiacal constellations include Aries (the ram), with Jupiter shining in its midst, Pisces (the fishes) and Aquarius (the water-carrier). To the north are the “square” of Pegasus (the flying horse) and Andromeda.
(Excerpt) Read more at highdesert.com ...
Jupiter has to be the most fun planet to look at, if you have any optics. The Moons are just awesome to see.
So, is Jupiter the bright star I’ve been seeing in the evening? (Obviously, I don’t have optics.)
Even with just a pair of binoculars you can see four moons. It’s very cool. You can see them lined up on their gravitational plane. They change sides as they rotate around the planet. So you might look and see:
O .. . .
Then you look at another time and see:
. . O . .
or
. . . O .
etc.
There is an astronomy museum here that gives public tours and has an old telescope. I got to see Jupiter and the moons and Saturn and the rings. It was really, really cool.
Most likely. Check it out with some binoculars. That’s all you need.
There’s a Leonid meteor shower tonight after midnight. It’s cloudy here in NJ, and this isn’t a great year for the Leonids, but it’s still a pretty good show if you have clear skies and don’t mind a chilly hour or so looking up at the sky.
I managed to see Venus on November 1, very low in the west, about 6:30 local time. It should be somewhat higher in the sky now. Mercury reached its highest point in the sky on November 14, magnitude -0.3, which is a little brighter than Vega or Arcturus. It should be a couple of degrees below Venus (haven’t managed to see it yet this time around). It will be in inferior conjunction either Dec. 3 or 4. There will be a partial eclipse of the sun on Nov. 25, not visible in the US (it will be late Nov. 24 US time). The new moon will pass 1.75 degrees North of Mercury on November 26 but I don’t know if Mercury will be high enough above the horizon to be seen easily by then.
That should be magnuitude minus 0.3 (when my previous message posted the minus sign appeared at the end of the previous line) for Mercury.
Brace the binocs against something.
Orion rises later in the evening and it’s always a pleasure to see the hunter.
By the way, November 1st was still Daylight Saving Time—6:30 p.m. would be the equivalent of 5:30 standard time. It wasn’t fully dark yet but Venus was already visible (Mercury wasn’t but I didn’t have a chance to hunt for it with binoculars...I was driving at the time).
. . O . last night
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
