November Night Skies over Tanzania
WATCH OUT THIS MONTH
· Carl Sagan’s birthday 9th November
· Year of the Solar System 2011
· Evenings after sunset
o Jupiter
o Galaxies
§ Andromeda Galaxy
§ Small Megallanic Cloud
o Moon
· Mornings just before sunrise:
§ Venus brilliant morning star in the East
§ Saturn in the East
§ Leonid Meteor Shower – 17 and 18 November
· International Space Station (ISS) 18th, 19th, 20th and 22nd November
CARL SAGAN
This month we mark the birthday of Carl Sagan on 9th November. He was an astronomer, astrophysicist and cosmologist of recent years, who popularised astronomy by bringing it into peoples homes through his vivid writings and an epic thirteen part TV documentary “COSMOS: A personal voyage”. He advocated the use of scepticism and wonder as two opposite but coexisting modes of thought to be used interactively in the scientific method of developing understanding of our Universe. He promoted exobiology and the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI).
THE YEAR OF SOLAR SYSTEM
Following the discovery of numerous exo-planets orbiting in solar systems around distant stars, NASA has declared the coming year to be THE YEAR OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM. More than 400 exo-planets have been discovered and the number is set to rise sharply with the recent deployment of a special spacecraft, KEPLER to discover the smallest planets around other stars. Many earth-like, terrestrial (solid) planets have recently been discovered raising the chances of finding extra-terrestrial life.
PLANETS
The planet Jupiter dominates among the bright stars in the skies this month shining extremely brightly in overhead. Mercury the elusive planet that never ventures too far from the Sun starts to become visible rising to its highest height of 20 degrees by 7th December. Venus is a brilliant morning star in the east at a height of 30 degrees just before dawn, while Saturn is 12 degrees above Venus.
MOON
New Moon is (was) on 6th November while the first crescent is visible a day later. First Quarter Moon, which is the best time to observe it through even small telescopes or binoculars is on 13th November, while Full Moon (not good time to see details on the Moon) is on 21st November. The Last Quarter moon is on 28th November.
METEORS
This month is the time for the Leonid Meteor Shower which peaks around 17th and 18th November. During the meteor shower, best seen and hour or two before dawn, bright flashes of light will “rain” down on us. A single flash appears as if a star has fallen and we call them “shooting stars”.
The name Leonid comes from the fact that the point in space from which the flashes of shooting stars will appear is in constellation Leo. So locate this constellation from midnight onwards when it will be rising in the eastern horizon to dawn when it will be overhead.
During meteor showers the earth runs into debris left behind by comets that have previously passed close to earth. Remember that comets are just chunks of dust and ice from deep space, which disintegrate when they come close to the heat of the sun. The tails of a comet is actually the dust material, a lot of which is left behind in its path. Sometimes large chunks of material are left behind and when the earth collides with it at nearly 1000 kilometres per hour, the dust particles are burned up by friction with the atmosphere and meteor showers turn into meteor storms. The best time to watch such showers is just before dawn when the movement of the earth is directly against the comet dust.
STARS AND GALAXIES
Rising in the south east at 9 p.m is the second brightest star in the sky, Canopus which can now be seen from this month onwards. It can be seen at the same time as Sirius and is one of the jewels of the southern skies since it can hardly be enjoyed from the northern hemisphere because it is always low, close to the horizon. It is also a very bright star well removed from other bright stars so it is often used as a reference beacon by spacecrafts on voyage to outer planets.
Three visible galaxies can be seen in the early night sky for the next few months. Two of these, the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) and the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) are members of our local group which form a trio together with our Milky Way galaxy. Both Megallanic clouds are once again the preserve of the southern skies since they are so close to the south point. The both have irregular shape and cover a wide area of the sky more than 4 to 5 degrees angular width. Even on a relatively dark night you can make them out with the naked eyes as large fuzzy objects against a dark background. Try to catch them first using a pair of binoculars.
The LMC lies between Canopus and the South point and can best be viewed after 9 p.m, while the SMC (3 ½ deg across) lies similarly between Achernar and the South. These two galaxies are about 50,000 light years away from us.
The third galaxy visible to the naked eyes at this time is the Andromeda galaxy, which, at 2.2 million light years makes it the most distant object that can be seen unaided. It lies in the northern hemisphere and is well high in the sky by early evening. It can be seen close to the Square of Pegasus in position marked ‘T’ in the sky map.
The bright stars marked this month are: A = Fomalhaut, B = Altaír, C = Deneb in Cygnus (the northern bird), D = Vega, E = Achenar and F = Antares, in constellation Taurus just rising in the east. All these are all first magnitude stars. Second magnitude stars are shown in white letters. They are: J = Al Nair in Constellation Grus (the bird), K = Peacock, L = Kaus Australis in the Sagittarius constellation.
The Milky Way band across the sky winds its way from south west to north east, straddling the western horizon so it does not cross the sky. Hence this month most of the sky will appear to have rather few stars.
INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION (ISS)
The International Space Station (ISS) will be seen in the evenings on 18th , 19th, 20th, and 22nd November, with the most impressive on 18th since the brilliant star like moving object suddenly disappears from view midway in dark skies well after sunset. It will rise in the north west, just before 8 pm, rise to 25 degrees above the horizon and will disappear three minutes later. On 19th it will rise even higher to 55 degrees after rising in the north west in bright western skies just around 7:45 pm and disappears in the south east horizon six minutes later. On 20th it will be low in the western horizon about 22 degrees maximum, rising in the north west around 7:15 pm and sets in the south five minutes later. On 22nd it is even lower in the west and even earlier so a challenge to spot, rising around 6:30 pm in the west north west and sets 4 minutes later in the south. For accurate timings enter your location on: http://heavens-above.com
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