Sirius always follows two hours behind Orion, or equivalently one month behind Orion, as they wheel through the night and through the seasons. High straighter above Orion are Aldebaran and, higher still, the little Pleiades cluster, the size of your fingertip at arm's length.ĭown below Orion, Sirius rises around 10 or 11 p.m. Look similarly far upper left of Mars, and there's Capella. Orion clears the eastern horizon by about 8 or 9 p.m., depending on how far east or west you live in your time zone. The light of the Moon, a day past first quarter, will interfere to some degree. The shower's radiant, near the Sickle of Leo, will be well up by then for the East Coast and will climb higher into dawn. EST Friday morning (6:00 UT), good timing for this region. Meteor-shower analyst Mikhail Maslow predicts a possible outburst of up to 250 or 300 meteors per hour visible starting around 1 a.m. ■ The Leonid meteor shower, which has been sparse in recent years, just might put on a show in the early-morning hours of Friday the 18th for eastern North America. Saturn, a totally different creature, is currently 81 light-minutes away. Lined up between them, counting left from Vega, are Altair and Saturn. Because Vega and Fomalhaut are the same distance from us: 25 light-years. In this rare case, that's because it really is one third as luminous. It too is a hot A star, but it looks only a third as bright as Vega. From bright Jupiter, look about three fists lower right. Shining from 25 light-years away, Vega is a fast-rotating type- A star, larger and hotter than the Sun. Vega is the brightest star high in the west. The Moon was exactly last quarter at 8:27 a.m. Skywatchers in the longitudes of the Americas will find the Moon forming an equilateral triangle with the Sickle's two brightest stars: Regulus below the Moon and Gamma Leonis to the Moon's lower left. Once it's well up, look for the Sickle of Leo to its left and lower left, not quite enclosing it. ■ The last-quarter Moon rises around 11 p.m. Timetables of all the Red Spot's transits this month, and all of the interplays between Jupiter and its moons and their shadows, are in the November Sky & Telescope, page 51. ■ Jupiter's Great Red Spot should transit the planet's central meridian around 8:25 p.m. This pair is much closer and appears single in most binoculars, but a telescope plainly resolves it.ĭelta Lyrae, upper left of Zeta by a similar distance, is a much wider and easier binocular pair. And a 4-inch telescope at 120× or more should, during good seeing, resolve each of Epsilon's wide components into a tight pair. The triangle is less than 2° on a side, hardly the width of your thumb at arm's length.īinoculars easily resolve Epsilon. Epsilon forms one corner of a roughly equilateral little triangle with Vega and Zeta Lyrae. Just above Vega, spot 4th-magnitude Epsilon Lyrae, the Double-Double. Close by it are three interesting double stars for binoculars and telescopes. ■ Vega is the brightest star high in the west. If so you probably saw a fragment of the Taurid parent body: the unusual short-period comet 2P/Encke. So if you see a bright, relatively slow meteor this week, trace its path backward across the sky and see if the line intersects Taurus. And this year there are predictions that fireball activity may be greater than usual. But the Taurids produce an unusual number of bright fireballs - occasionally, extremely bright. Its meteors are few current reports are running at about a half dozen per hour seen by practiced meteor counters under excellent conditions. ■ The slow, steady drizzle of the Taurid meteor shower continues this week. ■ The late-rising Moon (it comes up around 9 p.m.) shines under Pollux and Castor, as shown above. Ukraine star?įarther along in roughly the same direction you come to 3rd-magnitude Tarazed and, just past it, 1st-magnitude Altair. This is one of the finest colorful double stars for small telescopes: yellow and pale blue. Somewhat farther left, about a fist and a half at arm's length from Vega, is 3rd-magnitude Albireo, the beak of Cygnus. Its little constellation Lyra extends to its left. ■ Spot bright Vega in the west in early evening. Therefore, a telescope shows the black shadow of Saturn's globe on the rings as wide and prominent as the shadow ever gets.ĭo you know why? The answer is at the bottom of this page.* ■ Saturn is at eastern quadrature today, 90° east of the Sun. The waning gibbous moon crosses Gemini, rising nearly an hour later each night. The Moon doesn't play favorites it makes a point of visiting each planet every month, not to mention its own phase-maker, the Sun. A week ago it was Jupiter's turn with the Moon, and three days before that it was Saturn's. ■ The waning gibbous Moon rises less than an hour after nightfall is complete, with Mars shining to its upper right as shown below.
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