Special to CosmicTribune.com, November 18, 2024

Excerpts from weekly Sky&Telescope report.

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 18

■ The waning gibbous Moon rises within an hour after dark this evening. Watch for it to come up lower left of Jupiter. Another couple hours and Castor and Pollux will stand in good view to the Moon’s lower left, while Orion sparkles about three times farther to the Moon’s right.

By about 8 or 9 p.m. now Orion is clearing the eastern horizon. High above Orion shine Jupiter and, to Jupiter’s right or upper right, orange Aldebaran. Above Aldebaran are the Pleiades, the size of your fingertip at arm’s length. Far left of Aldebaran and the Pleiades shines bright Capella.

Down below Orion, Sirius rises around 10 p.m. No matter where they are, Sirius always follows two hours behind Orion.

By dawn on Tuesday the 19th, the scene has twisted around clockwise and the Moon has edged closer to Castor and Pollux as shown below.

At this time of year, the waning gibbous Moon always shines especially high before and during early dawn. How different the familiar lunar features look then in a telescope near the waning Moon’s terminator — lunar sunset — compared to the oppositely lit, lunar-sunrise terminator views that most of us know fat better, from observing only in the evening hours!

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 19

■ Now the waning gibbous Moon rises about two hours after nightfall, forming a roughly straight line with Castor and Pollux close above it (for North America). By dawn on the 20th, the Moon has moved far off the Castor-Pollux line to shine between Pollux and similarly-colored Mars, as shown.

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 20

■ When Saturn and Fomalhaut are “southing” (crossing the meridian due south, which they do simultaneously this week around 7 p.m.), the Pointers of the Big Dipper also stand straight upright on the opposite side of the sky: low due north, straight down below Polaris.

A little more than an hour after that, the first stars of Orion start rising above the east horizon (for skywatchers in the world’s mid-northern latitudes). Starting with the rise of Bellatrix, it takes Orion’s main figure a little more than an hour to clear the horizon.

■ The waning gibbous Moon rises around 9 or 10 p.m., with ever-brightening Mars about 4° to its upper right.

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 21

■ Vega is the brightest star high in the west-northwest these evenings. Its little constellation Lyra extends to its left, pointing to Altair, currently the brightest star in the west-southwest.

Three of Lyra’s stars near Vega are interesting doubles. Barely above Vega is 4th-magnitude Epsilon Lyrae, the Double-Double. Epsilon forms one corner of a roughly equilateral triangle with Vega and Zeta Lyrae. The triangle is less than 2° on a side, hardly the width of your thumb at arm’s length.

Binoculars easily resolve Epsilon. And a 4-inch telescope at 100× or more should, during good seeing, resolve each of Epsilon’s wide components into a tight pair.

Zeta is also a double star for binoculars. It’s much closer and tougher, but is plainly resolved in a telescope.

And Delta Lyrae, upper left of Zeta by a similar distance, is a much wider and easier binocular pair. Its stars are reddish orange and blue.

■ And a more famous double star from Vega: Continue somewhat farther leftward from Lyra’s pattern, and there, about a fist and a half from Vega, is 3rd-magnitude Albireo, the beak of Cygnus. This is one of the finest and most colorful double stars for small telescopes: Pale gold and bluish, magnitudes 3.2 and 4.7, separation 35 arcseconds.

Farther on in roughly the same direction you come to 3rd-magnitude Tarazed and, just past it, Altair.

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 22

By the 22nd Venus and Mercury have widened a bit to 21° apart. Mercury is about to start fading and dropping.

■ Last-quarter Moon (exact at 8:28 p.m. EST). The Moon rises around 11 or midnight, in Leo. Regulus shines a few degrees upper right of it. The Sickle of Leo extends about a fist-width or a little more to the upper left from Regulus. They all climb together through the rest of the night.

■ Algol should be at its minimum brightness, magnitude 3.4 instead of its usual 2.1, for a couple hours centered on 11:25 p.m. EST; 8:25 p.m. PST. Algol takes several additional hours to fade and to rebrighten. Comparison-star chart.

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 23

■ The bowl of the Little Dipper swings down in the evening at this time of year, left or lower left of Polaris in the north. Most of the Little Dipper is dim. Look as late as about 11 p.m., and it hangs straight down from Polaris.

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 24

■ Take advantage of the darkness these moonless evenings! A small to medium telescope is all you need to explore five Double Stars near the little Hockey Stick asterism in Andromeda, now high overhead. These are unnamed bonuses to the brighter pair Struve 14, orange and pale bluish, at the tip of the Hockey Stick.

The five lie in the large, very loose open cluster NGC 752.

  Nov. 18-24: Mars is brightening, The Sky