[Energetic music]
[Preston Dyches] What’s Up for November?
When to look for Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars this month,
a NASA spacecraft swings by Venus on its way to the Sun,
the tricky business of seeing the Moon hide a bright star,
and stick around til the end
for photos of highlights from last month’s skies.
Saturn is visible toward the south
for most of the night.
For observers in the Americas, it has a close meetup
with the Moon on the 10th, when the pair will appear
less than a degree apart just after dark,
making for a great sight through binoculars.
Check the sky again around midnight,
and you'll see the Moon has visibly shifted
a couple of degrees west of Saturn,
showing evidence of the Moon's
orbital motion in just a few hours.
Jupiter is rising in the east early in the night,
together with the bright stars of the constellations
Taurus and Orion,
and working its way across the sky by dawn.
By the end of November, it's rising
just as the sky is getting dark.
Mars follows behind Jupiter, rising about three hours
after the giant planet.
As in October,
early risers will find the Red Planet
high overhead in the morning sky before dawn.
In the evening sky,
Venus is low in the southwest following sunset
throughout the month of November.
It's blazing bright
and unmistakable if you find
a relatively unobstructed view.
It appears much higher in the sky
for those in the Southern Hemisphere,
who'll also be able to easily
observe Mercury after sunset this month.
And on the 4th, a slim crescent moon will appear just below
Venus for a beautiful pairing as the glow of sunset fades.
Now, staying with Venus, one of NASA's
intrepid solar system explorers is headed for a close encounter
with this Earth-sized hothouse of a planet, on November 6th.
Parker Solar Probe studies our planet's nearest star, the Sun.
Its mission is to trace the flow of energy
that heats the Sun's outer atmosphere and accelerates
the million-mile-per-hour stream of particles it emits.
It makes its measurements from super close to the Sun,
within the region where all the action happens.
To do this,
the spacecraft was designed
to fly within just 4 million miles of the Sun's surface,
which is 10 times closer than the orbit
of the closest planet, Mercury.
No other spacecraft
has ever gotten this close to the Sun before.
In the six years since its launch,
the spacecraft has made a bunch of approaches to the Sun, using
flybys of the planet Venus to shape its orbit.
The November 6th flyby is the final such maneuver,
intended to send the spacecraft toward its three
closest-ever solar approaches, starting on December 24th.
During this last Venus flyby,
the mission will capture images of the planet.
Previous views returned
by Parker showed that the spacecraft
could actually see features of the Venusian surface
through its dense cloud cover.
So look out for Venus in the evening sky,
as the brilliant planet
helps a craft from Earth to touch the face of the Sun.
In the couple of hours before sunrise on November 27th,
skywatchers in the eastern half of the U.S. and Canada
will have the chance to witness an occultation;
an event where the Moon passes in front of and
temporarily hides a bright star,
in this case Spica.
Observers in other parts of the world
will see the Moon pass extremely close to Spica,
but won't see it cover up the star.
This occultation is one of a series
that began in June
and will continue monthly through late next year.
These happen as the Moon's orbit slowly shifts
northward and southward across the sky,
and every so often, its path crosses
in front of Spica monthly for a time.
But each occultation is only visible
from a small portion of Earth.
For example, while this November event favors
North American viewers, South American observers
will get their chance next April.
For U.S. skywatchers, this November occultation
is the last good opportunity in this series
to see the Moon occult Spica until 2032,
when a new series of monthly occultations
will begin for locations across the globe.
Now, if you miss this event, don't worry!
The Moon also passes in front of three
other bright stars from time to time.
This means that no matter where you're located,
you'll have the opportunity
before too long to witness the impressive sight of a bright
star briefly disappearing behind the Moon.
Here are views of what some of the highlights we told you
about in last month's video actually looked like.
And here are the phases of the Moon for November.
Stay up to date on all of NASA's missions exploring
the solar system and beyond at science.nasa.gov.
I'm Preston Dyches from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
and that's What's Up for this month.