The Sky This Week from November 15 to 24 – Astronomy Magazine
Venus and Jupiter come together
Brilliant Venus hangs just below Jupiter with a Buddhist stupa in the foreground in this scene from Yamdrok Lake, Tibet, taken June 30, 2015.
Jeff Dai
Venus and Jupiter hang low in the southwest after sunset this week. Venus, which shines at magnitude –3.9, stands 5° above the horizon 45 minutes after sunset. Jupiter glows two magnitudes fainter than Venus and lies 9° to its neighbor’s upper left, or about the span of your closed fist when held at arm’s length. If you track the two this week, you’ll notice that they appear to be on a collision course. The gap between the planets narrows by 1° each day, setting up a dramatic conjunction at the end of next week.
Saturday, November 16
Although asteroid 4 Vesta reached opposition and peak visibility the night of November 11/12, the Full Moon was only a few degrees away that night and made finding the magnitude 6.5 space rock a serious challenge. Now that the Moon has moved well away — and Vesta shines just as brightly as it did at opposition — locating the asteroid through binoculars should prove much easier. The brightest asteroid lies in northeastern Cetus tonight, 3° west of the 4th-magnitude star Omicron (ο) Tauri and 5° northeast of 3rd-magnitude Alpha (α) Ceti.
Sunday, November 17
The Leonid meteor shower reaches its peak before dawn tomorrow morning. Although typically one of the year’s finer meteor showers, this year’s Leonid display suffers because it comes just a few days after Full Moon. A 65-percent-lit waning gibbous Moon shares the sky with the shower, drowning out the fainter “shooting stars” and rendering the brighter ones less impressive. Still, the Leonids produce more fireballs than most meteor showers, so it is still worth keeping an eye on the predawn sky.
Monday, November 18
Uranus reached opposition and peak visibility three weeks ago, and it remains a tempting target all this week. The outer planet appears in the eastern sky after darkness falls and climbs highest in the south around 10 p.m. local time. The magnitude 5.7 world lies in southeastern Aries the Ram, near that constellation’s border with Pisces the Fish and Cetus the Whale. Although Uranus shines brightly enough to glimpse with the naked eye under a dark sky, use binoculars to locate it initially. The closest guide star is magnitude 4.4 Xi1 (ξ1) Ceti, which lies 3.8° to the south-southeast. A telescope reveals the planet’s 3.7″-diameter, blue-green disk.
Tuesday, November 19
Last Quarter Moon arrives at 4:11 p.m. EST. It rises in the eastern sky shortly before midnight local time and reaches its peak in the south around sunrise tomorrow morning, by which time it appears slightly less than half-lit. Our satellite resides among the background stars of Leo throughout this period, roughly 5° from the Lion’s brightest star, 1st-magnitude Regulus.
