Planets
Mercury moves to become a morning object, you can find lower in the sky than Venus and Saturn before dawn. If using binoculars or a telescope, PLEASE be careful not to look directly at the Sun.
Venus is a bright morning star, rising a little before the Sun. Look for it in the East, it will be hard to miss!
Jupiter rises after sunset, making for excellent views of this amazing planet. Even a pair of binoculars will show you the four brightest moons scattered around the planet, and if you note their relative positions you’ll see they’ve changed completely from day to day.
Saturn rises before dawn, catching up with Venus as the month progresses. Towards the end of the month they’ll be very close together.
Mars is relatively close behind the Sun as it sets, making observations tricky this month. Look for a red star in the West.
Uranus and Neptune are visible but as faint as always. On a really clear night, with good eyesight, you might be able to see Uranus, otherwise a telescope will be required to see these pale blue-green gas giants.
Meteor Showers
The Leonids peak November 17th. The Moon will have set early, so it’s worth a look East around midnight to see if any shooting stars appear.
Solar Eclipse
This month sees a Total Solar Eclipse, but you need to be in Northern Australia to see it!
The Sky
Look towards the South on a cold, clear, dark November evening and you’ll be looking at the constellation of Pegasus – the winged horse. The ‘Great Square of Pegasus’ is the horse’s (upside down!) body, comprising four reasonably bright stars, with the neck and head leading down to the right where the star Enif points further right to the rather faint M15 globular cluster. Head down from Enif, and you’ll find another globular cluster, M2. Both clusters need binoculars to look their best.
Above and to the left of the Square, you’ll reach the constellation Andromeda – and one of the jewels of the sky, the M31 Andromeda Galaxy. This galaxy can be seen with the naked eye on a clear night as a fuzzy patch, but through a telescope.. well.. to be honest it just looks like a larger fuzzier patch. However, take a photograph and the true beauty of Andromeda’s galaxy appears – with all the light reaching your eye over 2.5 million years old.
Cygnus the Swan will still be visible as it flies towards the West horizon, so catch the beautiful double Albireo before it sinks too low. The heard of Cygnus is the open cluster M29, another fainter cluster of stars which needs binoculars to be seen clearly.
Over to the East, and Orion the Hunter starts to rise. First comes his prey, Taurus the Bull, with brilliant star Aldebaran the literal bull’s eye. Above Aldebaran is everyone’s favorite set of siblings: the Seven Sisters, also known as The Pleiades. It’s fun to try and count as many of the Seven Sisters with your naked eye as possible, but through a telescope they make a wonderful star field. These are bright, blue stars burning within a dust cloud, and are the nearest cluster to the Earth at ‘only’ 400 to 450 light years distant.
By late in the evening towards the end of the month, Orion will be strutting his stuff – easily one of the most dramatic constellations in the Northern Hemisphere. It’s hard to pick out a favorite aspect of Orion – it could be Betelgeuse the glorious red giant star, or Rigel the bright white/blue star in the bottom right. No, I’m only kidding: the best part is clearly the famous belt and sword right in the middle, complete with fantastic nebulae.
The month of November has three meteor showers – the minor South Taurids, and more impressive North Taurids and Leonids.
Moon Phases
The Full Moon is a few days before Hallowe’en, but will still be an impressive sight as you’re out Trick or Treating!
The Moon is at Last Quarter on November 6th.
The Moon is New on November 13th.
The Moon is at First Quarter on November 20th.
The Moon is Full November 28th.
Facebook and Twitter
You can stay in touch with Pocket Universe by following @CraicDesign on Twitter, or by visiting the FaceBook page.
Software News
Pocket Universe Version 4.6.4 (Universal) has been released, which includes bug fixes and achievements! Track your observations and challenge your friends on the Leaderboard!
Version 4.6.4 adds support for the new iPhone, and returns support for older iOS 4 devices. It’s getting harder and harder to support the latest and oldest of Apple’s devices, so pretty soon I’ll have to cut off iOS 4 support. I’ll be sure that you can’t accidentally update to a version that won’t run on your iOS 4 device. Thank you for your support over the years.
I’ve also updated the app What’s Up? to support Retina graphics and the iPad. Check it out! I’ve added a new option in this app to not look for your location as soon as you launch the app: if you are away from all kinds of networks this was irritating to some users. If this works, depending on feedback, I’ll be adding the feature to Pocket Universe.
Incidentally, the Universal feature of the app is creeping ahead of the iPad only version. Up until recently, the iPad version was the first place new features appeared. However, the iPad version is undergoing a complete rewrite, and this is taking longer than expected. Let me know if you have the iPad version and want access to new features sooner rather than later!
I’ve released a small, free app called Sky Time, which is ideal if you need to quickly know your location and time – for example, when setting up a telescope. Sky Time also displays Julian and Sidereal times. And did I mention its free? There is even a version for Windows Phone 7.
One more app you might be interested in: SkyQ. This is a big app that I’ve created together with those nice telescope guys at Celestron. SkyQ is like Pocket Universe, but with extras such as the NGC Catalog. It’s an app that will grow and grow over time into something remarkable. I suggest you take a look, as it was recently updated and major new features are coming very soon. I also have an app called “Asstrology” out there. I’ll let you find it if you really want it 😉
General Sky Watching, and what to look for..
At first glance, the night sky is a dome sprinkled with stars – and the darker the night, and the clearer the skies, the more stars you will see. However, the more you learn about the sky, the more you realize there is to see. Not all the lights you see are stars – some are actually planets (lumps of rock and gas that make up our Solar System), some are galaxies – themselves containing millions of stars – some are immense clouds of interstellar gas, some are clusters of stars..
Although the stars have positions that appear fixed with respect to each other, the planets, the Sun and the Moon appear to move. You might have noticed that the Moon is in a different place in the sky at the same time every night – in fact, it rises later and later every day. You’ve no doubt noticed the Moon changes its appearance: the shape changes from day to day as the angle between the Sun, the Moon and ourselves changes, altering the illumination falling on the Moon’s surface.
In other words, the night sky is a surprisingly dynamic place. Things move, and evolve, not only on a human scale of a few days or hours, but over millions of years. Nothing is still, the Universe is alive!
Watching the sky
There are many books and magazines available which will give you suggestions for things to look for in the night sky. Here are some of my own suggestions for what to look for on a clear night.
Naked Eye Observing
You can see thousands of stars with your naked eye, and they all appear as twinkling points of light. In fact, even with a large telescope, stars still appears as mere points: although huge, they are incredibly far away. It takes the very light you see years and years to travel the distance from the star’s surface to your eye.
The patterns in the stars which we call “constellations” are merely random pictures that human beings have created. There’s nothing special about them, other than an agreement on the pattern, and as they provides a quick and convenient way of identifying specific portions of the sky, their use has continued from ancient times.
You should remember that merely by sharing the same constellation says nothing about where are star is actually located in space, other than it appears to be near each other. The stars could actually be thousands of times further away from us, and merely “line up” because of our view point.
Still, learning the names and shapes of the Constellations is important, and a good way to spend an evening. Take Pocket Universe out, hold it up, and turn of and off the Constellation outlines to get an idea for the sense of scale involved.
If the night is clear, you’ll start to ascertain that some stars are a different color from others; Vega is a brilliant blue/white for example – compare this with Betelgeuse!
The planets will also appear as points of light with the naked eye, but it’s still possible to see Mars, Venus, Jupiter and Saturn very easily. It’s said the light from the planets doesn’t twinkle as much as star light, but I’ve never noticed this myself! If you watch out for the planets from night to night, you’ll see their position has changed slightly with respect to the stars around them. The planets are much, much closer than stars, and here on Earth we’re part of the same solar system, so we all spin around the Sun together.
On a very clear night, away from city lights, you’ll see The Milky Way. This is an edge-on view of the galaxy in which our Sun is a part. Almost every star you see in the sky is part of The Milky Way: these are our interstellar neighbors.
If you want to see another galaxy, track down Messier object M31 – the Andromeda Galaxy. The Andromeda Galaxy will look like a fuzzy patch of light, best seen just out of the corner of your eye. This galaxy is so far away, it takes 2 million years for the light from its stars to reach us. Sadly in the Northern Hemisphere, M31 sets too early to see at this time of year.
To see something a little closer to home, find M45 The Pleides. This is a cluster or grouping of stars, merely 440 light years away (the light you see tonight, set off in 1571AD). You might know them as The Seven Sisters, as those with good eye-sight can count seven stars in the group. Unfortunately in Summer, the Pleides also don’t rise far above the horizon until just before dawn in the Northern Hemisphere. Let’s find something a little easier to spot.
Planets! The planet Saturn is easy to spot at the moment – it’s high and bright in the South-West, quite near a brightish star (Porrima). You’ve just seen a “gas giant”. The other visible planets are hiding beneath the horizon until just before sun rise.
Binoculars
Saturn! Look at Saturn! Once you’ve spotted the rings (if your binoculars are half-way decent), start looking for other planets. You should be able to see Uranus and Neptune if you follow Pocket Universe’s directions.Get up early and look for Jupiter: with large binoculars you will be able to see the four brightest moons which orbit it. Mars will still only look like a speck, but you might be able to pick out a ‘phase’ of Mercury i.e. it won’t look perfectly round. And then of course, we get to the “deep sky objects”, such as the Messier objects. More to come..
Telescope
Saturn again, obviously! With a telescope, you can observe Jupiter’s moons of course, but also pick out details on Jupiter’s surface. Jupiter is surrounded by huge ‘bands’ of gasses, and you should be able to make out two thick darker ‘belts’ with even a smaller telescope. Mars is not in the best location for observation at present, but with a good telescope you should be able to see a white smudge at one pole – this is the ice-cap.
More to come..
ISS
Orbiting the Earth right now, at a height of approximately 350Km and traveling at almost 30,000 kph – that’s 200 miles, and 18,000 mph for you non-scientific unit folks) is the International Space Station. It’s the world’s only permanently manned outpost in space, and although it’s huge, it’s still under construction. It’s so big you can actually see it from the surface Earth, as long it’s flying overhead and is reflecting sunlight in your direction.
Pocket Universe now allows you to track the position of the ISS as it passes over the Earth. From the new ISS view, you can see what country the station is currently flying over, and if there are any sighting opportunities for your region.
If there is a suggested observation time, you’re in luck. Spotting the ISS is easy and fun – close to the suggested time, find a spot with a clear view of the horizon. Times which are just after sunset work best. You should see a very bright ‘star’ drift across the sky. It will finish its pass in about 2 or 3 minutes, and it might not get very high in the sky. At times, the ISS will be in Earth’s shadow, and may not be visible – so just after the sun has set, but when the ISS is still reflecting sunlight will give the brightest target. You can also watch for the ISS in the Virtual Sky mode (if you turn on ISS Updates from the Settings page). A little satellite will be drawn in the approximate position of the ISS to help you find it. But be quick – the ISS zooms past pretty quickly! If you have binoculars or you are good at moving your telescope quickly, you might be able to make out the shape of the station. Amateur astronomers have even managed to photograph astronauts taking a space walk!