November sky at night — click on the image below to see a larger version

The end of British Summer time should serve as a wake-up call for skywatchers, who can take advantage of the longer nights to enjoy the November sky. At the start of the month the first object to appear in the twilight is Jupiter, low in the south-southwest as the sun sets. Its home, in the constellation of Sagittarius, belongs firmly to the summer sky and as Jupiter heads west during the month the giant planet will become much harder to see. Keep an eye on it, though, during the last two weeks of November when Jupiter is joined and outshone by brilliant Venus. The brightest of the planets at magnitude -3.9 is only five degrees above the horizon at the start of the month (it is joined by the crescent Moon on the evening of the 1st), but it will get higher over the course of the month. On the 30th, the two planets will be just two degrees apart.

Of the other naked-eye planets, Mercury is all but lost in morning twilight and Mars is hopeless. Saturn, still working its way across the constellation of Leo, is becoming easier to see in the morning sky.

I already mentioned the Moon’s close approach to Venus, but it gets even closer to a fainter member of the Sun’s retinue later in the month. On the evening of the 6th, the Moon will pass in front of Neptune in what is known as an occultation. The timing is good — between 1800 and 1930 for mainland Britain, and as much as three quarters of an hour earlier for Ireland — and the Moon, just past first quarter, is well placed. The only catch is that you will only see the occultation from north of a line between York and the very western edge of Cornwall. Those in the South East get only a near-miss, but at least they can still use the Moon as a guide to find the solar system’s outermost planet. If clouds interfere on the 6th, a second-best is the full Moon’s passage across the Pleiades open cluster, between 1700 and 1900 on the 13th, which is ideal binocular fodder.

The Pleidaes, the seven sisters of Greek legend, are the most famous attraction in the constellation of Taurus, but not the only one by any means. Hesoid warns sailors to keep their ships from the sea when “the Pleiades flee mighty Orion” in the winter sky, but we can use the hunter to point us to Taurus itself. This best-known of the winter constellations rises before midnight during November, and the three stars of the belt point the way to Orion’s intended prey. Follow them up, away from the horizon, and you quickly reach a bright star.

This is Aldebaran, the eye of the bull, a distinctly orange star. The colour is obvious to the naked eye, at least to me, and not like that of any other first magnitude star. It lies among the stars of the Hyades, at a distance of only 150 light-years the nearest star cluster to the Sun. Most of the stars which make up the obvious V-shape around Aldebaran belong to the cluster, although Aldebaran itself is an interloper.

The rest of Taurus is more indistinct. Although Elnath (Beta Tauri) and Zeta Tauri, the two-third magnitude stars that mark the ends of the bull’s horns, are clear enough, the body of the bull is nothing more than a chain of stars. Above it in the November sky lies another hero to keep Orion company, Perseus. He fills the region of sky between Taurus and the unmistakable W of Queen Cassiopeia, his mother-in-law. This region is deep within the Milky Way, and glitters with almost countless clusters, many of which will show up in binoculars. Start with Cassiopeia, and find M103 to the left of the second star in the W (reading from left to right). From here, moving slowly toward Mirphak, the brightest star of Perseus will find the famous Double cluster, but in truth you should forget these instructions and just browse the November sky. Darker evenings are a blessing when the winter Milky Way is there to be enjoyed.