This Week's Sky at a Glance, November 7 – 16

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The interstellar comet: Can you see it in your scope? Maybe you can, starting late this week as Comet 3I/ATLAS emerges from behind the Sun. If you have a large amateur telescope with which you can detect an 11th- or 12th-magnitude faint fuzzy rather low in the east just before the beginning of dawn. That probably means at least an 8-inch scope, maybe larger.

Conditions start very tough for mid-northern observers, then improve. Writes Bob King: "On November 9th, the comet achieves an altitude of 10° just before the start of dawn for observers at 40° north latitude. The Moon will be in waning gibbous phase on that date and could pose a problem for visual observers. By the 16th, the comet's altitude doubles to 20° with the Moon a thin crescent located 4° to its south."

See his All Eyes on Interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS. The finder chart there starts on the morning of November 17th, as the comet passes Gamma Virginis. Get ready.

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FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 7

■ We're now at the time of year when Orion is nicely up in the east-southeast as early as 10 p.m. Late this evening you'll find it lower right of the Moon.

And tonight the Moon shines nearly on the line from bright Capella high overhead to Betelgeuse, Orion's orange shoulder. Will the Moon cross this line during the night for your location? Hold up a yardstick between the two stars, or a taut string between your hands, to judge a straight line more accurately.

Also: Look close to the Moon for Beta Tauri (El Nath), which at magnitude 1.6 just misses being classified as a 1st-magnitude star. Cover the glary Moon with your fingertip. The Moon's bright limb will occult Beta Tauri for central South America and west-central Africa.

■ Algol dips to its minimum brightness, magnitude 3.4 instead of its usual 2.1, for about two hours centered on 7:01 p.m. EST. It takes several hours to fully rebrighten.

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 8

■ Draw a line from Altair, the brightest star high in the southwest after dark, to the right to Vega, similarly high in the west and even brighter. Continue the line onward by half as far, and you hit the Lozenge: the pointy-nosed head of Draco, the Dragon. Its brightest star is orange Eltanin, the 2nd-magnitude tip of the Dragon's nose, always pointing toward Vega.

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 9

■ The waning gibbous Moon rises around 9 p.m. local standard time. As always, the exact time depends on your location. Jupiter follows it up a half hour later, about 4° to its lower right. Pollux and Castor are to the Moon's upper left.

This foursome forms a ragged diagonal line. Watch the line change shape hour by hour as the Moon moves eastward along its orbit. Later the line may become a smoothly curving arc, depending on where you are. By dawn the whole arrangement will have twisted around as shown below, and the Moon may be farther out of line.

■ Happy 91st birthday, Carl Sagan (November 9, 1934 – December 20, 1996). If only.

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 10

■ When night arrives the Great Square of Pegasus is still a bit tipped, high in the southeast above brighter Saturn. Within an hour or so the Square finishes righting itself to lie level like a box, high in the south.

A handy sky landmark to remember: The west (right-hand) side of the Great Square points far down toward 1st-magnitude Fomalhaut, about four fists below. The east side of the Square points down toward Beta Ceti, not as far and not as directly.

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 11

■ Last-quarter Moon (exact at 12:28 a.m. EST tonight). The Moon rises around 11 p.m., two or three fists lower left of bright Jupiter. The Moon is in western Leo. Look again in an hour or two as the Moon gets higher. Below it now is Regulus, and left of it are Gamma Leonis and the rest of the Sickle of Leo.

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 12

■ Find Fomalhaut far below the Great Square of Pegasus as described for Monday above. Whenever Fomalhaut is "southing" (crossing the meridian due south, which it does around 7 or 8 p.m. this week), the Pointers of the Big Dipper stand upright low due north, straight below Polaris.

And, the first stars of Orion are soon to rise above the east horizon (for skywatchers in the world's mid-northern latitudes). Starting with the rise of Bellatrix, it takes the seven stars of Orion's main figure a little more than an hour to clear the horizon.

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 13

■ Cygnus, high in the west after dark, is one of the most Milky-Way-rich constellations, but it has a reputation as being poor in deep-sky objects. A fine exception is the open cluster M39 with a total magnitude of 4.6, located 9° east-northeast of Deneb. Star-hop to it from Deneb using Matt Wedel's Binocular Highlight article and chart in the November Sky & Telescope, page 43. From Deneb using your finderscope, go through the starry arrowhead that points to the little arc that points to M39 as marked on his chart.

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 14

■ Vega is the brightest star in the west in early evening. Its little constellation Lyra extends to its left. Somewhat farther left, about a fist and a half at arm's length from Vega, is 3rd-magnitude Albireo, the beak of Cygnus. This is one of the finest and most colorful double stars for small telescopes.

Farther on in roughly the same direction you come to 3rd-magnitude Tarazed and, just past it, 1st-magnitude Altair.

■ Down from Tarazed runs Aquila's dim backbone, along the Milky Way if you have a dark enough sky. This arrangement reminds me of that other Summer Triangle bird, Cygnus, whose long neck and backbone also run along the Milky Way. Cygnus now flies high to Aquila's upper right.

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 15

■ Orion clears the eastern horizon by about 8 or 9 p.m. now, depending on how far east or west you live in your time zone. High above Orion shines orange Aldebaran. Above Aldebaran is the little Pleiades cluster, the size of your fingertip at arm's length. Far left of Aldebaran and the Pleiades shines bright Capella.

Once Orion is well up, bright Jupiter rises above the east-northeast horizon to shine through the rest of the night as it crosses the sky.

Then down below Orion, Sirius rises around 10 or 11 p.m. It's the second brightest point in the sky these nights after Jupiter. No matter where they are, Sirius always follows two hours behind Orion. Or equivalently, one month behind Orion.

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 16

■ The modest Leonid meteor shower should peak in the early hours of Monday morning. There will be no moonlight. Bundle up very warmly, get comfortable in a reclining lawn chair under an open sky, and be patient. Under excellent sky conditions, you might see a dozen Leonids per hour.

Also: The weak, long-lasting North Taurids and South Taurids are still ongoing all week. These two related showers are very sparse but are known for occasional bright fireballs.

■ Continue your skywatch into Monday's early dawn, look low in the east-southeast, and there's the thin crescent Moon with Spica a couple degrees above it or to its upper right. As twilight brightens Spica disappears, but brighter Venus rises to glow nearly two fists lower left of the Moon.

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This Week's Planet Roundup

Mercury and Mars are lost in the sunset.

Venus (magnitude –3.9) rises in the east during early dawn, about an hour before sunrise. It's getting lower every day.

Jupiter (magnitude –2.3, in eastern Gemini) rises in the east-northeast around 9 p.m. It dominates the eastern sky, then the southeast, as the night advances. Castor and Pollux shine upper left of it, then above it before dawn approaches. By then the three stand very high in the south — with Procyon below them and Orion much farther to their lower right.

Saturn (magnitude +0.9, at the Aquarius-Pisces border) is the brightest dot high in the southeast at nightfall. Find the Great Square of Pegasus above it. They stand highest on the meridian (due south) around 8 p.m.

Saturn's rings are now very nearly edge-on. They may look in a telescope like a long, very faint needle piercing the bright, distinctly oblate (flattened) globe. Their shadow on the planet is a black line along its equator. This aspect of Saturn is a sight to remember and one we won't see again for another 15 years.

Update / correction: Earth will not cross Saturn's ring plane this season. The rings' inclination will reach a minimum value of a mere 0.37° on November 23rd, then will start increasing again without Earth going through the plane. The inclination will stay close to that value for many days.

Will the rings become so thin that they look invisible? That would leave Saturn as a bare oblate globe divided by a thin black line.

For more goings-on at Saturn during this exciting time, including transits of big Titan's shadow across the globe, go to Bob King's See Saturn's Rings at Their Thinnest. He suggests using an occulting bar in your eyepiece to hide the glary globe and help reveal the hairline rings — and maybe give you a rare chance to add inner Mimas to your log of Saturnian moons seen. Or at least Enceladus, which I repeatedly glimpsed in a 6-inch reflector during a previous thin-rings season.

King includes a timetable of Mimas's greatest elongations that occur when Saturn is high in the dark for North America. And you can find Enceladus's greatest elongations by playing with Sky & Telescope's interactive Saturn's Moons calculator: run the hours forward and backward to see.

Uranus (magnitude 5.6, in Taurus 4° south of the Pleiades) is well up by 8 p.m. At high power in a telescope it's a tiny but definitely non-stellar dot, 3.8 arcseconds wide. You'll need a detailed finder chart to identify it among similar-looking faint stars.

Neptune is a telescopic "star" of magnitude 7.8, a dim speck just 2.3 arcseconds wide 4° northeast of Saturn. For Neptune you'll need an even more detailed finder chart.

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All descriptions that relate to your horizon — including the words up, down, right, and left — are written for the world's mid-northern latitudes. Descriptions and graphics that also depend on longitude (mainly Moon positions) are for North America. Eastern Standard Time (EST) is Universal Time minus 5 hours. UT is also known as UTC, GMT, or Z time.

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Want to become a better astronomer? Learn your way around the constellations. They're the key to locating everything fainter and deeper to hunt with binoculars or a telescope.

This is an outdoor nature hobby. For a more detailed constellation guide covering the whole evening sky, use the big monthly map in the center of each issue of Sky & Telescope, the essential magazine of astronomy.

For the attitude every amateur astronomer needs, read Jennifer Willis's Modest Expectations Give Rise to Delight.

Once you get a telescope, to put it to good use you'll want a much more detailed, large-scale sky atlas (set of charts). The basic standard is the Pocket Sky Atlas, in either the original or Jumbo Edition. Both show all 30,000 stars to magnitude 7.6, and 1,500 deep-sky targets — star clusters, nebulae, and galaxies — to search out among them.

Next up is the larger and deeper Sky Atlas 2000.0, plotting stars to magnitude 8.5; nearly three times as many, as well as many more deep-sky objects. It's currently out of print, but maybe you can find one used.

The next up, once you know your way around well, are the even larger Interstellarum Deep-Sky Atlas (with 201,000+ stars to magnitude 9.5 and 14,000 deep-sky objects selected to be detectable by eye in very large amateur telescopes), and Uranometria 2000.0 (332,000 stars to mag 9.75, and 10,300 deep-sky objects).

And read How to Use a Star Chart with a Telescope. It applies just as much to charts on your phone or tablet (which many observers find more versatile) as to charts on paper.

You'll also want a good deep-sky guidebook. A beloved old classic is the three-volume Burnham's Celestial Handbook. It was my bedside reading for years. An impressive more modern one is the big Night Sky Observer's Guide set (2+ volumes) by Kepple and Sanner. The pinnacle for total astro-geeks is the new Annals of the Deep Sky series, currently at 11 volumes as it works its way forward through the constellations alphabetically. So far it's up to H.

Can computerized telescopes replace charts? Well, I used to say this:

"Not for beginners, I don't think, unless you prefer spending your time getting finicky technology to work rather than learning how to explore through the sky yourself. As Terence Dickinson and Alan Dyer say in their Backyard Astronomer's Guide, 'A full appreciation of the universe cannot come without developing the skills to find things in the sky and understanding how the sky works. This knowledge comes only by spending time under the stars with star maps in hand and a curious mind.' Without these, 'the sky never becomes a friendly place.' "

Well, things change. The technology has continued to improve and become more user-friendly — particularly with software that can now, amazingly, recognize any telescopic star field to determine exactly where the telescope is pointed — finally bypassing all the imperfections in the mount, tripod, gears, bearings and other mechanics, or in the user's skill in setting up.

The latest revolution is the rise of small, photographic-only "smart scopes." These take advantage of not only today's pointing technology, but also the vastly better capabilities of imaging chips compared to the human retina. And the most sophisticated image processing can come built in. The result is reasonably capable deep-sky imagers, at least for beginners, in shockingly small, low-priced units. They can enable contributions to serious citizen-science projects. These imagers are changing the hobby at the entry level. For more on this revolution see Richard Wright's "The Rise of the Smart Telescopes" in the November 2025 Sky & Telescope, and the magazine's review of this especially tiny one.

If you get a more capable computerized scope that allows visual use, make sure that its drives can be disengaged so you can swing it around and point it readily by hand when you want to, rather than only slowly by the electric motors (which eat batteries).

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Audio sky tour. Out under the evening sky with your
earbuds in place, listen to Kelly Beatty's monthly
podcast tour of the naked-eye heavens above. It's free.

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"The dangers of not thinking clearly are much greater now than ever before. It's not that there's something new in our way of thinking, it's that credulous and confused thinking can be much more lethal in ways it was never before."
            — Carl Sagan, 1996

"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence."
            — John Adams, 1770

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