What's Up November 12-19, Jared May

What’s Up This Third Week of November

The forecast is looking promising for clear skies the first few days of the week with increasing cloud coverage heading into next weekend. This time of year seems to bring mostly cloudy skies, so be sure to capitalize on the optimal stargazing weather when you can. Sunset this week is just after 5 PM so be ready for some astronomically dark skies by 6 PM. This time of year, stargazers have access to about 12 hours of darkness (excluding twilight hours) so despite the 40- and 30-degree weather that follows the sunset, the reward is long hours of stargazing possibilities. This week be on the lookout for Taurids and Leonid meteors, a new moon, a double star cluster, and during the cloudy nights check out the brand new images coming from the Euclid space telescope. 

The Taurid meteor shower runs from October 20th to about December 10th and this past Saturday (November 11th) was the peak. While the meteors can appear all over the sky, they appear to radiate from a region in the sky northwest of the easily-spotted Orion constellation. 

Meteors can be photographed by taking multiple exposures over a long period of time.

Granted, this meteor shower only produces a few fireballs per hour, but they should be easier to spot than normal meteors. This is because the particles that form the meteors are slightly larger than average. As the particles slam into Earth’s atmosphere at a staggering 65,000mph, they reach temperatures exceeding 3,000°F causing them to vaporize. This heating is not dominated by frictional forces of the sand grain-sized particle ripping through the upper atmosphere but is instead dominated by something called ram pressure where the air is compressed in front of the speeding meteor causing a rapid increase in temperature. Ram pressure is the same phenomenon that makes the sides of a bicycle pump warm when you compress air with it.

The Taurids seem to radiate from the constellation Taurus. Taurus is in the evening hours, making this meteor shower a good one to watch for those who don’t like to stay up late (or get up early).

If the Taurids aren’t impressive enough, the Leonid meteor shower, which runs from November 6th to November 30th, will peak this Friday, November 17th. This shower will produce a more impressive 15 fireballs per hour. Try looking for these shooting stars coming from the area 45° east of the base of the Big Dipper. 

The Leonids seem to radiate from the constellation Leo, which gives them their name. Leo rises in the early morning hours in November.

There’s an old joke amongst amateur astronomers that says when there is an interesting astronomical event, be it a meteor shower or an eclipse, the weather is either cloudy or the moon is full. Well, we have a rarity early this week because there will clear skies and the new moon. The new moon occurs on Monday, November 13th, and this will will provide ideally dark skies for stargazing and meteor spotting. The thin waxing crescent that follows will be a great telescope or binocular target. 

Around 10 PM, look 20° north of the zenith (directly overhead) with binoculars or a telescope to spot two densely packed regions of stars. This is Caldwell 14, otherwise known as the Double Cluster. Quite often when two objects appear next to each other they are only seemingly so. One object is often much further away. In the case of the Double Cluster, however, both collections of stars are neighbors and sit around 7,500 light years away and are actually quite close to one other in space. These clusters have the vague appearance of globular clusters but are in fact young open clusters just 14 million years old (compared to the Pleiades which is estimated to be 100 million years old.). [Image: https://science.nasa.gov/image-detail/double-cluster-in-perseus/]

The double cluster, a true pair.

Once the clouds roll in later this week, check out the European Space Agency’s website to view the brand-new images produced by the Euclid space telescope. Launched in July of 2023, this telescope’s mission includes surveying huge areas of the sky to make a 3D map of galaxy distributions to better understand dark energy, among many other things. Similar to the James Webb Space Telescope, Euclid is also located at Lagrange point 2 and is observing the cosmos in near-IR. [Image: https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Euclid/Euclid_s_view_of_the_Horsehead_Nebula

This detailed image of the famous Horsehead Nebula is one of the first images published from the Euclid collaboration.

Get outside and enjoy the clear night skies before the clouds slowly roll in. Make sure to grab some warm winter-weather gear to ensure your stargazing sessions are as comfortable as possible on the near-freezing nights. Gaze upwards into the vast cosmos and enjoy the wonderful displays put on by meteors streaking across the incredibly dark new-moon sky, a double cluster of stars directly overhead, and enjoy the images from Euclid that reveal the night sky invisible to the human eye.

Clear Skies!