Skip to footer

Skywatchers, don't miss these awesome cosmic spectacles

November promises to bring a slew of celestial events, sure to keep amateur astronomers busy.

|
Jose Luis Gonzalez/Reuters
A man observes the sky through a telescope while attending with others an open-air astronomy class in the Samalayuca Desert, on the outskirts of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, October 23.

November has begun, and with it comes a set of cosmic events that skywatchers will want to look out for – including aligning planets, multiple meteor showers, and a comet visible with the naked eye.

Last month, Mercury, Venus, Mars, and Jupiter chased one another within the constellation Leo, with Venus taking the lead, in what University of Adelaide astronomer Ian Musgrave described as “a planetary dance, in that the planets are coming relatively close to each other, as we see them in the sky.”

"Of course, they're actually separated by millions of miles [but] when the planets are close to each other in the sky we call this a planetary conjunction,” he told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation at the time.

This month, a somewhat dim Mars and a bright Venus will conjunct in the early hours of the morning on Tuesday, according to the US Naval Observatory. Less than a degree apart, both planets rise at about 2:45 a.m., The Washington Post reports.

Other celestial events include the Taurid meteor shower, which will peak on Wednesday, promising about 10 meteors an hour. The Leonids, a meteor shower caused by the Temple-Tuttle comet and that peaks in mid-November every year, are expected to do so at midnight on Nov. 17 to 18 for the continental US.

Once in a great while, the Leonids produce a meteor storm that features thousands of meteors per minute, but astronomers say this year’s shower will be more average, with about 15 shooting stars an hour.

November will also see the asteroid Vesta pass near the Cetus constellation, named after a sea monster in Greek mythology. Vesta, though relatively small at 325 miles in diameter, will be bright enough to be visible to watchers using only binoculars, according to Tech Times.

The Catalina comet, visible with or without binoculars, can also be spotted near the constellation Virgo on Nov. 22.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Skywatchers, don't miss these awesome cosmic spectacles
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2015/1102/Skywatchers-don-t-miss-these-awesome-cosmic-spectacles
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe