Greetings junior scientists, scientists and citizens of this great big weird, wild and wonderful world in which we live. As always I'm your humble science communicator the great Orbax coming to you from the Department of Physics here at the University of Guelph and I'd like to welcome you to our November 2024 Star Gazing Guide.
Well November is upon us and so begins those short November days and those long November nights. With daylight savings in the rear view we'll have nearly 15 hours of nighttime skies by month's end. Plenty of time for star gazing action! This month we'll be on the lookout for not one, not two, but five planets visible to the unaided eye! Learn a little bit about the ecliptic and the Zodiac. Say goodbye to the last Super Moon of the year and cross our fingers for some meteors! All this and more if we just take some time... to look up.
This month we'll be able to see most of our planetary neighbors with the unaided eye, depending on how late you want to stay up that is! The gas giant Jupiter rises in the East around Sunset but is brightest and clearest in those early morning hours. Mars, the Planet of Robots, also rises in the early hours of the evening with best visibility in the morning. Venus is an evening planet visible low in the horizon in the southwest for an hour or two after Sunset. Saturn will already be quite high in the sky at Sunset with best viewing before midnight. At Sunset look for it in the Southeast or in the South later in the month. As a matter of fact on November 10th Saturn undergoes Conjunction, it's apparent closest approach, with the waxing gibbus Moon visible from Sunset to around 1:00 a.m. when they both set. Now even our tiny friend Mercury will be visible with the unaided eye this month especially on November 15th when it'll be at its highest point above the Horizon which we call it's Greatest Elongation. It will be faint and low in the horizon around dusk, so how do we spot it? Well I want to introduce something called the ecliptic. You see the orbits of the planets more or less lie within the same plane. Think about it like a record on a record player with the Sun in the middle and the orbits of the planet stuck within the record as the record spins. This record is an imaginary surface that we call the ecliptic plane. If you were to stand on the Earth you would see the Sun trace a path in the sky and because the planets all lie on that imaginary record you'd also be able to spot all the planets more or less along that path. That path in our sky is called the ecliptic. So if you can spot the path that the Sun's taking you'll notice that all the planets lie close to that path. Want to spot Mercury? Look for where the Sun is setting and then try to find Venus or Saturn. Now follow that path from those planets towards the Sun until you spot our tiny friend! Good luck junior scientists!
Now something else that appears along the ecliptic are the signs of the Zodiac. The ecliptic is divided into 12 equal parts each with its own Zodiac constellation. This month, the constellation Pisces is already up in the Eastern Sky when the Sun sets and down in the west by sunrise and you guessed it, it follows that same path... the ecliptic!
Our full moon takes place on November 15th and is the fourth of four consecutive Super Moons. Historically November marks a dramatic drop in temperature. The Mi'kmaw of Eastern Canada refer to this Nov Full Moon as the Rivers Freezing over Moon, Keptekewiku's, and the Cree similarly refer to it as the Freeze Up Moon, Kaskatinowipisim.
Settlers refer the November Full Moon as the Beaver Moon named for the last rush of beavers completing their stores of food to take shelter in their lodges for the looming winter.
This month marks two more meteor showers. The Taurids which peaked on November 4th and 5th and the upcoming Leonids. The Leonids is an average meteor shower producing about 15 meteors an hour and emanating from the constellation Leo the Lion, produced when we travel through the debris left by Comet Tempel-Tuttle. It runs from November 6th to the 30th annually peaking on November 17th this year. Unfortunately this is only a few days after the full Super Moon meaning that the brightness of the Moon will likely obscure some of the dimmer meteors but if you make it to a dark sky after midnight you still might be able to find a few good ones.
Well junior scientists this month marks three years of monthly stargazing videos. Not to mention eclipses and meteor showers which actually brings us close to 70 episodes during that time! For those of you who have been along for the ride I want to thank each and every one of you. The shares, the likes and, more importantly, the emails about your astro-journeys have honestly meant the world to me. For those of you new to our little show, welcome in! I can't wait for you to experience the adventure that's in store when you just take some time... to look up.
See you next month junior scientists and don't forget to have a science-tastic day! Special thanks to Royal City Science's own planetary geochemist Dr Glynis Perrett for her help preparing our Star Gazing Guide and the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada.