Skywatch Line for Friday, November 21, through Sunday, November 23, written by Sam Salem

This is Dudley Observatory’s Skywatch Line for Friday, November 21, through Sunday, November 23, written by Sam Salem.

On Friday, Sun rises at 6:55am and sets at 4:27pm; Moon rises at 8:33am and sets at 4:57pm.

Shortly after sunset on Saturday and Sunday evenings, watch the waxing crescent Moon move through the Teapot asterism of Sagittarius. Look for the Teapot once the bright light of the Moon has moved on.

Venus, magnitude –3.9, rises in the east-southeast during dawn an hour or less before sunrise. It’s rising a little later every day.

Jupiter, magnitude –2.4 in eastern Gemini, rises in the east-northeast around 8 pm. It dominates the eastern sky, then the southeast, as the night advances. Castor and Pollux shine upper left of it, then above it in the hours before dawn.

Saturn, magnitude +0.9 at the Aquarius-Pisces border, is the brightest object high in the southeast at nightfall, below the Great Square of Pegasus. It stands highest on the meridian in early evening.

Uranus reaches opposition on Friday. Now is the best time to see the distant ice giant, floating among the stars of constellation Taurus. At opposition, planets rise around sunset and set around sunrise. Uranus is faint at magnitude 5.6. Wait until it climbs above the hazier air near the horizon. By 8 pm, Uranus is nearly 40° high in the east, located to the lower right of the easy-to-find Pleiades star cluster (M45). Use binoculars or any telescope and center on the Pleiades. From there, move about 4.3° to the lower right and look for a pair of 6th-magnitude stars side by side. These are 13 and 14 Tauri. Uranus currently forms an east-west line with these stars, standing about 0.9° east of the easternmost star in the pair. Uranus is brighter than 14 Tau and roughly the same brightness as 13 Tau. In a telescope the planet’s 4”-wide disk will look like a tiny, circular, grayish “flat” star.

Neptune, magnitude 7.8, sits 4° northeast of Saturn. In a telescope, Neptune is a dim speck just 2.3 arcseconds wide. Use a detailed finder chart to identify Neptune among similar-looking faint stars.

Vega, in the constellation Lyra, is the brightest star high in the west these evenings. Three of Lyra’s stars near Vega are double stars. Barely above Vega is 4th-magnitude Epsilon Lyrae, the Double-Double. Epsilon forms one corner of a roughly equilateral triangle with Vega and Zeta Lyrae. The triangle is less than 2° on a side, hardly the width of your thumb at arm’s length. Binoculars easily resolve Epsilon. A telescope, during good seeing, should resolve each of Epsilon’s wide components. Zeta is also a double star for binoculars. It’s much closer and tougher. Delta Lyrae sits upper left of Zeta by a similar distance. It is a much wider and easier binocular pair. Its stars are orange and blue.