SkyEye

Welcome to SkyEye, your guide to this month's celestial events.

November 2012

The Calendar

All times and dates are given in Universal Time (UT).
Nightly darkness estimates are calculated for 45° N and 30° S.
Like total solar eclipses, lunar occultation events can be seen only from limited regions on Earth (and sometimes not at all if the occultation takes place during daylight hours). However, the Moon will appear close in the sky to its 'target' for some hours either side of the actual occultation, regardless of where you are.

Date		Event
1	Thu	Moon at apogee
2	Fri	Moon occults Jupiter: visible from South Africa from 00:35 UT.
3	Sat
4	Sun
5	Mon
6	Tue
7	Wed	Last Quarter Moon
8	Thu
9	Fri
10	Sat
11	Sun
12	Mon	Moon occults Spica: visible from Madagascar and parts of Antarctica from about 00:00 UT.
13	Tue	The New Moon totally eclipses the Sun: visible from western Australia and the southern Pacific Ocean.
14	Wed	Moon occults Mercury during the daytime.
14	Wed	With the Moon at perigee only 12 hours after the New phase, expect high tides.
15	Thu
16	Fri
17	Sat	A waxing crescent Moon means dark skies for the Leonids (theoretical peak activity: several predictions ranging from 09:50 UT and 21:00 UT today to 06:00 UT on 20 November).
17	Sat	Mercury at inferior conjunction
18	Sun
19	Mon
20	Tue	First Quarter Moon
21	Wed	The waxing gibbous Moon causes few problems for the Alpha Monocerotids (theoretical maximum activity: 09:55).
22	Thu	Neptune at east quadrature
23	Fri
24	Sat
25	Sun
26	Mon
27	Tue
28	Wed	The Full Moon undergoes a penumbral eclipse and reaches apogee within the space of five hours.
28	Wed	Moon occults Jupiter: visible from southeastern South America and southern Africa from 23:20 UT.
29	Thu
30	Fri

Coming up next month...

Jupiter is at opposition, shining brightly in the sky all night.

December is also home to several meteor showers, the most reliable of which is the Geminids in mid-month.

The Solar System

The word planet is derived from the Greek word for 'wanderer'. Unlike the background stars, planets seem to move around the sky, keeping mostly to a narrow track called the ecliptic, the path of the Sun across the stars. Dwarf planets and small solar-system bodies including comets, are not so constrained, often moving far above or below the ecliptic.

Sun: Libra » Scorpius » Ophiuchus
Although Ophiuchus is not a member of the zodiac, the ecliptic passes through it.
Mercury: Scorpius » Libra
Mercury undergoes a daytime occultation of the Moon on 14 November and reaches inferior conjunction just three days later. From a northern hemisphere vantage point, it can be viewed in the west just after sunset for the first few days of the month but remains visible from southern latitudes until mid-month.
Venus: Virgo » Libra
Now appearing in the east before sunrise, the 'morning star' sinks rapidly towards the horizon as seen from the northern hemisphere but maintains a low but steady altitude for those looking at it from southern latitudes.
Mars: Ophiuchus » Sagittarius
Found in the west after sunset, the red planet vanishes soon afterwards.
Jupiter: Taurus
Opposition next month means that the biggest planet in the solar system is visible for most of the night. It is occulted by the Moon twice this month, first on 2 November and again on 28 November, a few hours after our satellite's penumbral eclipse.
Saturn: Virgo
At conjunction last month, the ringed planet reappears late in November as a morning sky object, found in the east just before sunrise.
Uranus: Pisces
This mysterious world sets in the early hours of the morning.
Neptune: Aquarius
A small telescope is necessary to view the most distant planet in the solar system. It reaches east quadrature on 22 November and sets before midnight.

The Celestial Sphere

Constellations are patterns of stars in the sky. The International Astronomical Union (IAU) recognises 88 different constellations. The brightest stars as seen from the Earth are easy to spot but do you know their proper names? With a set of binoculars you can look for fainter objects such as nebulae and galaxies or some of the closest stars to the Sun.

Descriptions of the sky for observers in both the northern and southern hemispheres are available for the following times this month. Subtract one hour from your local time if summer (daylight savings) time is in effect.

Local Time	Northern Hemisphere	Southern Hemisphere
1730 hours (1830 hours summer time)	45° N	30° S
1930 hours (2030 hours summer time)	45° N	30° S
2130 hours (2230 hours summer time)	45° N	30° S
2330 hours (0030 hours summer time)	45° N	30° S
0130 hours (0230 hours summer time)	45° N	30° S
0330 hours (0430 hours summer time)	45° N	30° S
0530 hours (0630 hours summer time)	45° N	30° S

For More Information...

Consult our online glossary for non-technical explanations of many of the astronomical terms used in these pages.
Blue moons, eclipses, the dates of Easter and much more can be found at the Interactive Astronomy Pages.
For more information about the objects and events described in SkyEye, visit these astronomy-related sites.

Credits

Much of this information can be found in this month's issue of your favourite amateur astronomy magazine available in your local bookshop. Another excellent source is the current edition of the Astronomical Calendar by Guy Ottewell and published by the Universal Workshop.

The SkyEye banner features the supernova remnant known as the Crab Nebula. Six light years wide and 6500 light years distant, this expanding nebula is the shattered remains of a star that blew up nearly a thousand years ago. At its heart beats a pulsar, a neutron star which spins at the incredible rate of 30 times per second. The supernova explosion which produced this object was observed in 1054 in China, Japan and Arabia. It was also seen in North America by the Anasazi people who lived in what is now New Mexico and who depicted it in a petroglpyh. This image is a composite assembled from 24 individual exposures taken by the Hubble Space Telescope in October 1999, January 2000 and December 2000, and is courtesy of NASA, ESA, Jeff Hester and Allison Loll (Arizona State University). The colours represent different elements which were expelled during the explosion: neutral oxygen (blue), doubly-ionised oxygen (red) and singly-ionised sulphur (green). These elements will find their way into the next generation of stars and planets (and extra-terrestrial life?).