Take in a parade of evening planets, enjoy Local Group galaxies and search for binary star Mira
When to use this chart
1 Nov at 00:00 AEDT (13:00 UT)
15 Nov at 23:00 AEDT (12:00 UT)
30 Nov at 22:00 AEDT (11:00 UT)
The chart accurately matches the sky on the dates and times shown for Sydney, Australia. The sky is different at other times as the stars crossing it set four minutes earlier each night.
November Highlights
Equipment: Naked eye
Brilliant Venus is prominent in the western evening sky, still high up when twilight ends, having just gone through a greatest elongation west in late October. It spends the month in the Sagittarius, passing across the Teapot asterism from the 12th to the 20th.
As November opens, a small telescope reveals Venus shaped like a quarter Moon, 26 arcseconds across. It grows as it heads towards inferior conjunction, ending the month 38 arcseconds across.
Stars and constellations
Equipment: Naked eye
November evening skies from mid-latitude Southern Hemisphere locations offer a barren but unique view of the heavens. All around you the Milky Way is hugging the horizon. Above is an unobscured view of the half of the Universe that lies below (south of) the galactic plane. Besides the local stars and globular clusters this is the domain of the galaxies, with three obvious members of the Local Group, the two Magellanic Clouds (high in the south) and M31 (low in the north).
The planets
Equipment: Naked eye
Start with Venus, above it is Saturn and then Jupiter, all conspicuous in the western sky. Saturn is not as bright as Jupiter, but they are both prominent in Capricornus. The outermost planets are also on view; Neptune is transiting (due north) during twilight, followed by Uranus, which transits about midnight. A borderline naked-eye object, Uranus’s attainment of mag. +5.6 makes it a better target.
Deep-sky objects
Equipment: Binoculars
Mira (Omicron (o) Ceti), RA 2h 19.3m, dec. -2° 59’, is a brilliant variable star and the brightest long period pulsatingtype variable. It varies from around 3rd magnitude down to 8th magnitude, with the full cycle taking 330 days. Mira’s peak in 2021 is expected in September and by November it is likely to have faded to about mag. +4.5. To help you watch its drop in brightness, a plot of magnitude measurements and a finder chart with comparison stars can be downloaded from the AAVSO website. Mira’s next minimum is expected in March 2022 (close to conjunction).
Equipment: Small/medium telescope
Located just 1.7° west of Mira is a pretty 6th magnitude double star, 66 Ceti (RA 2h 12.8m, dec. -2° 24’). The component stars are mag. +5.7 and +7.7, appearing yellow and white respectively, separated by a comfortable 17 arcseconds.