by Duncan Lunan

The Moon is near Saturn on the 2^nd and the Pleiades on the 6^th, with Uranus to the right below, is near Jupiter and below Castor and Pollux on the night of the 10^th, and near Venus low in the morning sky on the 18^th.  After New Moon and back in the evening sky, the Moon is above Saturn on the 29^th. 

The planet Mercury rises at 6 a.m. near the end of the month, after inferior conjunction with the Sun on the 20^th.

Venus in Virgo rises at 5.30 a.m., was north of the Moon on the 1^st, still very bright although low in the sky, and is passed by the waning crescent Moon on the morning of the 19^th.

Mars is still out of sight behind the Sun this month. 

The interstellar visitor 3I/ATLAS, no ordinary comet, passed Mars between September 24^th and October 5^th  (Fig. 1), observed by ESA’s Mars Express and Exomars Trace Gas Orbiter – considerably brighter than Comet McNaught was when it passed Mars in 2014, but still only a blob or a faint streak in time exposures  (Figs. 2-4). 

3I/ATLAS was still behind the Sun at perihelion on October 29^th, but on November 2^nd it came into view from ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer  (Fig. 5), when the ‘comet’ was expected to be most active. 

It won’t emerge from behind the Sun until late November or early December, as seen from here, but it is being imaged by other spacecraft – see ‘Space Notes’ next Sunday, I hope.

Jupiter in Gemini now rises around 8 p.m., below Castor and Pollux, and is brilliant for the rest of the night, passed by the Moon on the 9^th and 10^th, and comes to its ‘stationary point’ on the 11^th as the Earth begins to catch up with it before opposition on January 10^th, 2026.  The shadows of Io and Callisto cross the planet on the morning of November 21^st.

Saturn in Aquarius sets about 2 a.m., with the Moon nearby on the 1^st and 2^nd, and again on the 29^th, when it too is ‘stationary’ after opposition in September.  Titan, the second largest moon in the Solar System, passes before and behind Saturn twice in November  (details are in this month’s issue of Astronomy Now), but its shadow no longer crosses the planet, though the rings are once again almost edge-on to us.

Observations by the James Webb Space Telescope in November 2014 have revealed strange shapes in the upper atmosphere of Saturn:  strange dark blobs or ‘beads’, and lower down, a huge starlike feature, with two arms missing,  (Fig. 6).  There’s no explanation for them at present, but it’s been established that the ‘beads’ are vertical columns hundred of kilometres in height, while the vertices of the cap overlap those of the ‘hexagon’ below, which is shaped by surrounding cyclonic storms  (Fig. 7). 

The Andromeda Evolution  (Fig. 8, Harper Collins 2019), Daniel H. Wilson’s authorised sequel to The Andromeda Strain by the late Michael Crichton, suggests that the hexagon shows the fast-mutating virus of the original has gained a foothold beyond Earth, which would make the resemblance of the ‘star’ to the black cap of a hanging judge doubly ominous.

Uranus in Taurus comes to opposition on the 21^st, at its closest to Earth and due south at midnight, below the Pleiades and near the Moon on the 6^th.

Neptune in Pisces is to the left of Saturn, setting around 2.30 a.m., passed by the Moon on the 30^th.

The Leonid meteor shower from Comet Tempel-Tuttle peaks on the night of the 17^th-18^th, and will not be spoiled by the waning Moon in the morning sky.

As this column was first drafted, Comets Lemmon and Swan simultaneously made their closest approaches to Earth on October 21^st, the former at 56 million miles and the latter at 24 million.  Comet Lemmon was visible in binoculars in the evening sky, passing below the Plough and through Boötes  (Fig. 9), while Swan had just reached the morning sky in the northern hemisphere  (Fig. 10);  both might have been seen with the naked eye in perfect conditions, but neither grew bright enough for that. 

Nevertheless my colleague Dr. Alan Cayless managed to get an excellent shot of Comet Lemmon from Bridge of Allan in a 40-minute exposure on October 23^rd, after sunset  (Fig. 11), in which detail is visible in the tail, though slightly blurred due to movement away from the nucleus. 

By 6 a.m. it might in theory have been visible again from here on Arran, but it was behind a tree until the sky began to grow light.  At the end of October Comet Lemmon was below the head of Serpens, while Swan will be visible above the southern horizon, between stars Sadalmelik and Sadalsuud in the constellation Aquarius, above the first quarter Moon.

More about 3I/ATLAS shortly!  

Duncan Lunan’s recent books are available through Amazon;  details are on Duncan’s website, http://www.duncanlunan.com.

You can download a copy of the Sky Map for November here: