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Chances are that during the month you will come across some products that are named after a celestial object. One notable brand is Subaru cars. Their badge consists of six stars, with one now more prominent, and is the insignia adopted by a conglomerate set up by six Japanese manufacturers in the 1950s. Subaru is also the Japanese name for the Pleiades star cluster in Taurus.
The compact swarm is often better known as the Seven Sisters and is now visible above the eastern horizon after sunset, with five or six of its brightest members easily visible at first glance. Some observers have suggested that it looks like a tiny version of The Plow, which is a great description.
While some additional stars can be spotted with the naked eye, it is with binoculars that the Pleiades are truly spectacular. The field is littered with numerous sparkling fragments of cut crystal and the blue-white light of these suns alludes to their youth.
The cluster is about 115 million years old and about 445 light-years away, so the light we see this month began its journey just before Galileo was the first to draw the Pleiades through a telescope in the winter of 1609/10. A drawing in his great work Siderius Nuncius shows a couple of dozen stars.
We now know more than a thousand individuals in the group, all born in the same region of space. Over time, the gravitational influence of our galaxy will disrupt the cluster and the Pleiades will go their separate ways. Long exposure photographs show a scene shrouded in gas and dust illuminated by starlight, but this is a chance encounter with an interstellar cloud as the cluster’s embryonic material dissipated long ago.
Because they are located near the celestial equator, the Pleiades are visible all over the world and are intertwined in several myths, as well as having descriptive names such as those listed in An Gúm’s Foclóir Réalteolaíochta as a tÉillín (“brood” or “clutch”) , a Streoillín (“disordered line”) and a Tréidín (“flock”). Indeed, the resemblance to a flight of birds is noted by many ancient cultures.
The Pleiades were often associated with the onset of months of cold days or feasting for the souls of the dead, as their climax at midnight was the height of winter and, for the Druids, the festival of Samhain. The appearance of the cluster is still measured by some native peoples to predict whether it will be too wet or dry to plant crops, while it was also said to delineate the sailing season in the Mediterranean regions.
Easy to overlook in Taurus is another prominent star cluster called Iadi. This more scattered group has a V-shaped pattern that points away from the orange star Aldebaran, which itself is not a member as it is only half as far away. The Hyades are much older than the Pleiades and are a laboratory for testing theories of stellar evolution.
In Greek myth, the Pleiades are the daughters of Atlas and Pleione, with six of the seven gods getting married. The remaining daughter Merope is said to have vanished after her marriage to a mortal. It is interesting to note that we find references to this “lost” Pleiade in stories around the world. Some have suggested that the star experienced a true loss of brightness in the past, but other tales mention a different missing Pleiad. The enigma persists, just as the beautiful Sisters continue to captivate and enchant these evenings.
The last quarter of the moon falls on November 8, the new moon on the 15th and the first quarter on the 22nd, with the full moon on the 30th which coincides with a lunar eclipse of partial penumbra.
These types of eclipses are more subtle as the moon only dips into the more diffuse outer parts of the Earth’s shadow projected into space.
The eclipse starts at 7.32 a.m. on the 30th but you won’t notice anything until the moonset at 8.12. This is more of a hope to be honest and count on the moon’s glow being turned off when it’s down, which can help emphasize any very light spots near the top of the disc. We will miss the eclipse maximum at 9.42 as it occurs after the moonset from here.
Mercury is visible in the morning sky throughout November, but is highest above the southeastern horizon around 6.45 by 10. It can be found on the lower left of Venus and near Spica at this time, but it is a bit more bright star. The Moon also acts as a guide when it is near on the morning of the 13th and 14th.
Venus rises three hours before the Sun during the month and dominates the eastern sky before the first blushes of dawn appear. It seems to narrow the gap every day to Mercury, but it doesn’t get closer than 12 degrees (a little more than an arm’s length fist) on the 13th. Their separation remains static for about a week before widening again when Mercury shuts down. plunges into the sun.
Mars is retreating in the rearview mirror as it were, as Earth has now passed it on our fastest orbit. But the planet still glows bright orange in the eastern sky as darkness falls and remains visible until the early hours of the morning. The gibbous moon is close to Mars on the evening of the 25th.
Jupiter and Saturn fit into the same low-power binocular field of view in early November, but are only half that distance by the end of the month as the gap between them slowly narrows. The two planets can be found in the southwest on these evenings and set after 8pm. Look for them at the top right of the Moon on the 19th.
Two active meteor showers in November are the Leonids and the Northern Taurids. Rates of the former are normally very low during its peak on the 16th, but reach storm levels every 33 years or so when the associated parent comet returns to the inner solar system, which will happen later in 2032.
The Northern Taurids peak on the night of November 11 and also generally show low rates. But they can provoke surprises and sometimes produce bright, slow-moving fireballs.
Space flight
A new launch date for the next Crew Dragon mission to the International Space Station was set shortly after the October article was published. The mission is now scheduled to take off on 11 November and will ferry four additional members of the expedition’s final crew to the station.
The morning passes of the ISS last until November 9, after which it switches to the evening sky from the 20. Forecasts for your location can be calculated on Heavens Above.
Chang’e, named after the Chinese moon goddess, is China’s series of lunar explorations that first began in 2007, when Chang’e 1 reached lunar orbit. Chang’e 5 is a robotic champion return mission that is expected to launch in late November. Current plans are to collect about 2 kg of material from beneath the lunar surface for subsequent return to Earth.
John Flannery is a longtime amateur astronomer with an interest in history and knowledge of the sky along with astronomical phenomena observable with the naked eye. He is a member of the Irish Astronomical Society
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