Skywatch Line for Friday, November 1, through Sunday, November 3, written by Sam Salem
This is Dudley Observatory’s Skywatch Line for Friday, November 1, through Sunday, November 3, written by Sam Salem.
On Friday, Sun rises at 7:30am and sets at 5:47pm; Moon rises at 7:40am and sets at 5:35pm.
New Moon occurs at 8:47am on Friday. New Moon rise and set with the Sun.
Daylight-saving time ends at 2:00 am Sunday morning. Clocks “fall back” one hour.
In early evening twilight on Sunday, watch Venus, near the waxing crescent Moon. The dark portion of the Moon will be glowing with earthshine. That’s sunlight bounced from the surface of Earth.
Both the South and North Taurids don’t have very definite peaks. They ramble along in October and November and are especially noticeable from late October into early November, when they overlap. Best time to watch is around midnight, and on the days when the Moon doesn’t interfere. The radiant rises in early evening, highest in the sky around midnight. Under dark skies with no Moon, both the South and North Taurid meteor showers produce about five meteors per hour, or 10 total when they overlap. Taurid meteors tend to be slow-moving but sometimes very bright. The showers sometimes produce fireballs.
On Saturday, Algol in Perseus, high in the east, should be in mid-eclipse, at magnitude 3.4 instead of its usual 2.1, for a couple hours centered on 10:42 pm. Algol takes several hours to fade beforehand and to re-brighten after.
Deneb still shines right near the zenith as the stars come out. Brighter Vega is still not far from the zenith, toward the west. The third star of the “Summer” Triangle, Altair, remains very high in the southwest. As a result of sunset and darkness arriving earlier and earlier during autumn, if you go out and star watch soon after dark, you’re doing it earlier and earlier by the clock. This counteracts the seasonal westward turning of the constellations. This applies to the entire celestial sphere, not just the Summer Triangle.
The Great Square of Pegasus is a large, easily recognizable pattern of four medium-bright stars up in the sky in October and November evenings. One of these four stars doesn’t formally belong to the constellation Pegasus. It’s Alpheratz, the brightest star in the constellation Andromeda. Many people use this star to locate the Andromeda Galaxy in the night sky. While it appears as a single star to the unaided eye, Alpheratz is a tight double star system. This star reaches its midnight culmination, its highest point in the sky at midnight, on October 9. So, it’s generally considered an autumn star for Northern Hemisphere observers. Yet you can see it in the summertime when it rises late at night. By late winter, Alpheratz is setting with the Sun. At magnitude 2.06, Alpheratz isn’t as bright as the sky’s brightest stars. But you can spot it easily, except in very light-polluted areas. The origin of the name is an Arabic phrase “surrat al-faras” meaning
“navel of the horse”. The horse corresponds to the winged horse of the Greeks, Pegasus.