Photo of the Week. No, it's not Comet ISON, but Comet
Hyakutake of 1996 with its fine blue ion tail pointing away from
the Sun. See full resolution.
Astronomy news for the week starting Friday, November 8, 2013.
Our perpetual Moon starts off the night of Friday, November 8, in
its fat waxing crescent phase just
shy of first quarter, which is passed
the night of Saturday the 9th. It will make a fine sight low in
the southwest, set against the dim stars of Capricornus. Over the rest of the week it then goes to
the north in the waxing gibbous
phase, which is terminated at full Moon next week on Sunday the 1y7th.
Having left Venus behind, it visits only Neptune on Monday the 11th and
Uranus on Wednesday the 13th, the latter planet in Pisces just a bit to the northeast
of
the Vernal Equinox. On that same
day (Wednesday the 13th), Neptune ceases
retrograde motion and resumes its stolid easterly trek against
the stars of far western
Aquarius.
Venus shines brightly in the early evening southwestern sky and now
gets to spend an hour in the dark after the end of twilight before
it finally sets. With Venus setting later and
Jupiter rising earlier, we lack a bright planet for only
somewhat over an hour. Rising around 8:30 PM in Gemini still to the south of Castor and Pollux, the giant planet passes
nearly
overhead shortly before dawn begins to light the sky. While
Jupiter barely seems to move against its stellar background, Mars, rising
just before 1:30 AM, is zipping along south of central Leo east-southeast of first magnitude
Regulus and southwest of second
magnitude Denebola, the two
white
stars providing a nice color contrast to more reddish Mars. Then
it's back to dawn and Mercury
, which is making a brief appearance in morning's twilight
running not far ahead of the Sun. The elusive little
planet has but an 88 day revolution period about the Sun, and
relative to the moving Earth makes alternate appearances in the
morning and evening skies every 58 days, so it's here today, gone
tomorrow, quite the opposite of its brilliant neighbor,
Venus.
The constellations of summer
evening
(Cygnus with its Northern Cross and
the like) drop ever farther to the west, while those of autumn are
ascendent. Look for the Great Square of Pegasus high to the south at 8 PM with Andromeda streaming off its
northeast corner and the Circlet
of
Pisces below it (though for that
we
will have to wait until the bright Moon is out of the way). By
late evening Andromeda's mythical mother, Cassiopeia, represented by her upside down "W" crosses
the meridian high to the north.
