Special to CosmicTribune.com, November 21, 2023, 2023

Excerpts from weekly Sky&Telescope report.

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 20

■ First-quarter Moon (exact at 5:50 a.m. EST Monday morning). The Moon accompanies Saturn more closely than it did yesterday, as shown.

■ The tiny black shadow of Io crosses Jupiter’s face from 9:16 to 11:26 p.m. EST, moving across Jupiter from east to west. The side of Jupiter without the Great Red Spot will be facing us.

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 21

■ Algol should be at minimum light, magnitude 3.4 instead of its usual 2.1, for a couple hours centered on 10:55 p.m. EST; 7:55 p.m. PST. Algol takes several additional hours to fade and to rebrighten.

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 22

■ The east (left) side of the Great Square of Pegasus points down to the Moon this evening.

■ And the Moon itself forms a bigger, wide rectangle with (counting clockwise) Saturn three fists to its right, Fomalhaut below Saturn, and Beta Ceti left of Fomalhaut.

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 23

■ Does the Sun already seem to be setting about as early as it ever will? Correct. We’re still a month from the winter solstice — but the Sun sets its earliest around December 7th if you’re near latitude 40° north, and already the Sun sets within only about 2 minutes of that time.

A surprising result of this: The Sun actually sets a trace earlier on Thanksgiving than on Christmas — even though Christmas is famously close to solstice time!

This offset of earliest sunset from the solstice date is balanced out by the opposite happening at sunrise: The Sun doesn’t rise its latest until January 4th. Blame the tilt of Earth’s axis and the eccentricity of Earth’s orbit.

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 24

■ The Moon has moved on to the next giant planet, shining near Jupiter this evening and tomorrow evening as shown below.

The bright waxing gibbous Moon passes Jupiter.

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 25

■ As the stars come out, the Cassiopeia W stands on end (its fainter end) high in the northeast. Watch Cas turn around to become a flattened M, even higher in the north, by late evening.

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 26

■ The Moon is full both this evening and tomorrow evening (because it’s exactly full at 4:16 a.m. Monday morning EST). This evening, the glary Moon is just 1° or 2° from the Pleiades for North America.

  November 20-26: Sun sets earlier on Thanksgiving than Christmas, The Sky