The nights are colder, but please don’t let that keep you from venturing outside and looking up at our sky.

Venus continues to sink lower in the east in the mornings, on its way to becoming an evening planet early next year.  On the 24th and 25th it will be joined by Mercury, only 1 ½ degrees away.

Saturn is easily located in our sky, and is with us until 1:00 A.M.  Jupiter rises at 8:00 P.M., and is still within Gemini, the Twins, part of our winter series of constellations.  Neptune is easily found with your binoculars, lying just 4.4 degrees northeast of Saturn.  

Mars is too close to the Sun in the evening, making it difficult to locate.

The Moon becomes new on the 20th.  Afterwards, please watch it become a waxing crescent, and enjoy the Earthshine, the Earth’s reflected sunlight striking the surface of the Moon, allowing us to see the dark side of our neighbor. 

Only one comet may be able to be observed with a small telescope this week: Just C/2025 R2 SWAN can be viewed in the evening, just north of the top of the Circlet in Pisces.  It is moving east-northeastward about ½ degree each day.

We are still waiting for the star T in the constellation Corona Borealis to brighten. It now sets at 7:30 P.M., but you can then look for it as it rises at 4:00 A.M.

Last time, we mentioned Princess Andromeda, whose head star is shared with Pegasus, the Flying Horse.  Legend has it that she was waiting to be lunch for some type of hungry monster. However, being a princess, despite her predicament, she still has on her finger a beautiful gem.  This is actually a galaxy, called M31, the Andromeda Galaxy.  This galaxy is the farthest object we can see with the naked eye - in a dark sky - about 2.5 million light years away.  It also was the first object recognized as a galaxy, in the 1920s, by astronomer Edwin Hubble.

Recently, we mentioned the first person to witness a transit of Mercury in 1631.  Pierre Gassendi, following the work of Johannes Kepler, noted the time and proceeded to write about it. However, although Kepler was an astonishing mathematician, he overlooked a transit of Venus in 1639.  The person who noted it, and the first of only two to witness it, on November 24, 1639 (using the Julian calendar that was in use at that time, later altered to December 4th), was Jeremiah Horrocks.  He did tell his friend William Crabtree, and they became the only ones who watched Venus travel in front of the Sun.  Years later, this type of observation was used in attempting to determine the size of the solar system.

While observing the Comet of 1779, Antoine Darquier de Pellepoix observed the Ring Nebula (M57) in Lyra, the Harp, that Charles Messier had found months earlier.  Using a small refractor, Darquier described it as a “nebula between gamma and beta Lyrae, it is very dull, but perfectly outlined, it is as large as Jupiter and resembles a planet. . .”  This was the first time a celestial object, using that description, was referred to as a planetary nebula.  Darquier was born November 23, 1718.

Although telling time is second nature to us, just looking down at our watches or phones, it was a struggle to actually create the concept of time telling.  Most important in the 19th century was the movement of the railroads, in order to both have satisfied customers and prevent any major collisions.  On November 18, 1883, the railroads put forth the concept of four time zones in the United States, something that had been proposed years before by school principal Charles Dowd.  Each time zone is set an hour apart, allowing railroad companies to coordinate schedules through the country. Years later, on March 19, 1918, this was adopted as the official time in the country.  

For many years, the 1,000-foot Arecibo radio telescope was the premier instrument in the world.  Above the giant dish, a 900-ton platform, suspended by cables connected to three towers, hung 450 feet above it.  On August 10, 2020, one cable failed, slipping from its socket in the tower, and leaving a 100-foot gash in the giant dish.  The NSF was authorized to use available funds to attempt to rectify the problem.  However, on November 6, a main cable broke, then other cables were found to be deficient.  Eventually, engineering assessments realized that damage to the observatory cannot be repaired without significant risk to any workers, and on November 19, 2020, after 57 years of continued working,plans were made to decommission it.

Don’t forget to celebrate Fibonacci Day, November 23.  That date, written as 11/23, begins the series of numbers making up the sequence.  

The beautiful autumn leaves will soon be totally gone, so also look up at the ones still on the trees while enjoying our night sky.