Clear Skies returns - hopefully with clear skies (November 15th)

 

Clear Skies is back… if only we had clear skies.

For those of you not on Vancouver Island, I’d like to explain why there haven’t been any Clear Skies notes for awhile.  

We just haven’t been getting clear skies; those of you on Vancouver Island understand fully!

With our longer evenings, Clear Skies returns… and hopefully clear skies return!

The Leonid Meteor Shower

The big event now in progress is the Leonid meteor shower.  The peak is around noon on Monday, November 17th, which means your best chance of seeing an increased number of meteors is Sunday or Monday night.  You may also see a few the following few nights.

Remember to dress warmly, find a spot with as large a swath of open sky as you can find but out of direct light from houses or street lamps.  Lay back in a lounger or on a blanket and just watch the sky with you naked eye.  Give your eyes a few minutes to adapt to the dark in order to start to see the fainter meteors.  With any luck you should see a few, and perhaps even a couple very bright ones.

The Morning Sky

Around 6 a.m. Sunday and Monday, you may see a thin crescent Moon very low in the southeast.  Notice how the whole disk is visible because of earthshine – light reflecting off our clouds and lighting up the “dark” part of the Moon.

Venus rises around 7 a.m.  On Monday and Tuesday mornings you can look for an even thinner crescent Moon closer to Venus.

Before dawn, you can also see Jupiter shining quite brightly low in the southwest, about 20 degrees above the horizon – less than the width of your outstretched hand at arm’s length.  With binoculars you may be able to pick out its bright moons close to it.

The Evening Sky

Saturn is the best object in the evening sky right now.  Early in the evening, you will see it shining brightly towards the south, nicely up in the sky.  Our angle on the rings varies during Saturn’s orbit around the Sun, and right now they are so thin as to be almost invisible from our perspective here on Earth.

As a binocular challenge, find Saturn in your binoculars, and then move them a bit to the left and slightly up.  With Saturn barely in your view, or just outside it, look for a pale blue dot in the left of your view.  That is the planet Neptune.

The Moon

Starting around November 23, you can look for a thin crescent Moon low in the southwest just after sunset.  It will be slightly higher in the sky each day after that, reaching First Quarter on the 29^th.

It is often possible to see the Moon during the day.  Before the Full Moon, the Moon follows the Sun across the sky – closely just after New Moon and then about 12 degrees further away each day.  On the 28^th or 29^th, look to the southeast late in the afternoon, and you should easily see an almost Quarter Moon in the daytime sky! 

The Moon rises early afternoon, but it will be lower in the sky.

 Clear skies.

David Prud'homme