The Evening Sky in November 2024
Mercury ends its best evening sky appearance of the year in the first half of the month. At the beginning of November it will be setting two hours after the Sun and is the brightest ‘star’ in the lower western sky. Above it will be orange Antares and below it orange-red Mars, the two similar in brightness. Mercury fades and slips lower in the twilight as it moves between us and the Sun and more of its sunlit side is turned away. On the 13th it will be beside Mars, and similar in brightness, as the two planets set around 9:30 NZDT. By the 15th it will be below Mars and fading in the twilight, so it isn’t on the chart.
Saturn is high up the north sky in the evening, looking like a medium-bright star with a cream tint. In a telescope it looks like a ball with a spike through it as the ring is nearly edge-on to our view. The Moon will be near Saturn on the 2nd and again on the 29th.
Sirius, the brightest true star, is low in the east, twinkling colourfully. It rises around 9:30 mid-month and is up at dusk by the end. Canopus, the second-brightest star, is in the southeast. Both stars twinkle like diamonds as the air disperses their white light.
Sirius is the brightest star both because it is relatively close, nine light-years away, and bright as stars go. Seen up close it would be 23 times brighter than the sun. By contrast, Canopus is 300 light-years* away and 13 000 times brighter than the sun.
Left of Sirius is the constellation of Orion, with 'The Pot' at its centre. Rigel, a bluish supergiant star, is directly above the line of three stars; orange Betelgeuse, a red-giant star, is straight below. Left again is orange Aldebaran. It is at one tip of a triangular group called the Hyades cluster. The Hyades and Aldebaran make the upside-down face of Taurus the bull. Still further left is the Pleiades or Matariki star cluster, also called the Seven Sisters, Subaru and many other names. Six stars are visible to most eyes. Dozens are seen in binoculars. The cluster is 440 light-years away and around 100 million years old.
The Milky Way is low in the sky, visible around the horizon from the northwest, through south into the eastern sky. The broadest, brightest part is in Sagittarius, to the right of the Scorpion's sting. The Milky Way is our edgewise view of the galaxy, the pancake of billions of stars of which the Sun is just one.
Low in the south are the Pointers, Beta and Alpha Centauri, and Crux the Southern Cross, now upside down. In some Māori star lore the bright southern Milky Way makes the canoe of Maui with Crux being the canoe's anchor hanging off the side. In this picture the Scorpion's tail can be the canoe's prow and the Clouds of Magellan are the sails. Alpha Centauri is the closest naked-eye star; 4.3 light-years away.
The Clouds of Magellan, LMC and SMC, high in the southern sky, are two small galaxies about 160 000 and 200 000 light years-away, respectively. In a dark sky they appear as luminous patches. The globular star cluster 47 Tucanae looks like a slightly fuzzy star near the top-right edge of the Small Magellanic Cloud, SMC. It is 13 000 light-years away and on the line of sight to the SMC. Globular clusters are spherical clouds of ancient stars.
Very low in the north is the Andromeda Galaxy, easily seen in binoculars in a dark sky, and faintly visible to the eye. It is like our Milky Way Galaxy and nearly three million light years away.
Jupiter rises in the northeast around 1:40 a.m. at the beginning of the month and 11:40 p.m. at the end (so isn’t on the chart). It is the brightest ‘star’ in the morning sky and shines with a steady golden light. Any telescope will show its disk and its four ‘Galilean’ moons lined up on each side. The Moon is near Jupiter on the morning of the 11th. From places with a sea horizon to the east, Venus might be seen rising 30 minutes before the Sun. It is now on the far side of the Sun from us and will soon be invisible until it reappears in the western evening sky around March 2026.
*A light-year (l.y.) is the distance that light travels in one year: nearly 10 million million km or 10^13 km. Sunlight takes eight minutes to get here; moonlight about one second. Sunlight reaches Neptune, the outermost major planet, in four hours. It takes sunlight four years to reach the nearest star, Alpha Centauri.
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