[Engergetic music]
[Preston Dyches] What's Up for November?
Sunset planets, a partial lunar eclipse
and the return of the winter stars.
From November 6th through the 11th.
Watch the Moon glide past Venus,
Saturn and Jupiter after sunset in the south-southwest.
In particular,
if you step outside
for a look on November 7th you'll find the four-day-old
crescent moon just about two degrees away from Venus.
Should be really pretty, so don't miss it.
And now, through early December, you'll find Jupiter and Saturn
drawing a little closer to Venus each night.
A partial lunar eclipse is on the way,
taking place overnight on November 18th and 19th,
when the Moon slips into Earth's shadow for a couple of hours.
Weather permitting, the eclipse will be visible
from any location where the Moon appears
above the horizon during the eclipse.
Depending on your time zone, it'll occur earlier or later
in the evening for you.
Now that's a huge swath of the planet
that'll be able to see at least part of the eclipse,
including North and South
America, Eastern Asia, Australia and the Pacific region.
So check the timing of its visibility for your area
For U.S. East Coast observers.
The partial eclipse begins a little after 2:00 a.m.,
reaching its maximum at four in the morning.
For observers on the West Coast, that translates to beginning
just after 11:00 p.m.
with a maximum at 1:00 a.m.
Partial lunar eclipses might not be quite
as spectacular
as total lunar eclipses—where the moon is completely covered
in Earth's shadow—but they occur more frequently.
And that just means more opportunities
to witness little changes in our solar system
that sometimes occur right before our eyes.
All month long, if you're up late and cast
your gaze toward the east, you'll notice
some familiar companions have begun rising late in the night.
The familiar stars of northern winter skies are returning,
rising late at night and sitting high in the south by dawn.
You'll find the Pleiades star cluster
leading the constellations Taurus, the bull, and the hunter
Orion, followed by the brightest star in the sky, Sirius,
all of them back to keep us company
on the long winter nights here in the northern hemisphere.
And for those in the southern hemisphere,
they're keeping you company on shorter
nights as spring gives way to summer there.
A fun note about the Pleiades
this month is that several of the eight
asteroids to be visited by NASA's
Lucy mission are located in that part of the sky.
The Lucy spacecraft launched on October 16th
on its 12-year mission
to visit a bunch of special asteroids called the Trojans.
They share the orbit of Jupiter, with a group of them
leading the planet and another group following behind it.
Lucy will be the first space mission
to explore this unique group
of asteroids, providing new insights about the formation
and early history of our Solar System.
Here are the
phases of the Moon for November.
You can catch up on all of NASA's missions
to explore the solar system and beyond at nasa.gov.
I'm Preston Dyches from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory
and that's What's Up for this month.