What to look for in November’s skies
As the weather begins to cool and the air becomes crisper, this November should prove to be a great month for backyard astronomy!
Mercury skims the Horizon
Soon after sunset, Mercury should become visible on the southwest horizon (So try and get somewhere near sea-level and flat!) and will remain easily visible (with binoculars or a telescope) throughout the first half of the month, with a steady magnitude (how bright it is) of –0.3. On November 1. the planet is 2° high 30 minutes after sunset. And by Nov. 9, Mercury will stand 4° above the horizon 30 minutes after sunset. It will then be 2° north of Antares. In bright twilight, however, binoculars will still be needed to spy the star to the lower left of Mercury.
Apparent magnitude as a scale
Mercury also moves through southern Ophiuchus (which straddles the celestial equator - a projection of Earth's equator into space that divides the celestial sphere into the northern and southern hemispheres. It has a declination of 0 degrees and is a 360-degree circle around our sky) reaching its greatest eastern elongation on the 16th, 23° east of the Sun. It will then set a little over an hour after sunset. This is the best Mercury will be this month. Through a telescope you should be able to see a 62% disk. By the 20th, Mercury is exactly 50 per cent lit.
After that, Mercury begins to dim in the sky and by the 23rd, it will shine at magnitude 0. A and then the week after it will have plummeted to magnitude 1.4 and lost from view.
Ideal viewing for Venus
Venus will be making its way across the Milky Way and is easy to spot soon after sunset due to its distinctive bright glow -hence the nickname Evening (or Morning) Star, starting the month at magnitude –4. Check out the planet an hour after sunset with Ophiuchus as a good guide in the twilight sky. Venus will remain visible about two hours after sunset, allowing for plenty of viewing time.
From the 4th, Venus will stand 4° due north of a waxing crescent Moon. From then, the conditions will be ideal for photographing it with the Milky Way in the background on a clear night. (The Milky Way will appear as a brighter band across the sky, perhaps with a very high concentration of stars, which should also be clear through a telescope or even some astronomical binoculars.) A telescope from the 4th will show Venus as a 76% lit disk.
Venus will then cross through the constellation of Sagittarius on the 8th of November and by the 11th will stand 1.5° south of M8, the Lagoon Nebula (M22 -a spectacular globular cluster within Sagittarius- will be particularly visible on the 18th, 1.6° north of Venus at the 5th magnitude of brightness)
By the end of November Venus will get 0.1 on the magnitude scale dimmer, but will be up for 3 hours after sunset (68% lit through a telescope)
