In the Sky This Month

A barely-there crescent Moon teams up with Venus, the disappearing Morning Star, in tomorrow’s dawn twilight. Look for them quite low in the east-southeast beginning about 45 minutes before sunrise.

Spica, the brightest star of Virgo, is quite close to the Moon at dawn tomorrow. The system, which is 250 light-years away, consists of two giant stars. They are so close together that their shapes are distorted, so they look like eggs.

The Leonid meteor shower will peak tomorrow night. At best, though, it might produce only a dozen or so “shooting stars” per hour. The sparse meteors can appear anywhere in the sky, so you don’t need to look in a particular direction to see them.

The Cartwheel Galaxy is about 500 million light-years away, in Sculptor, which moves low across the south on November evenings. A smaller galaxy punched through it long ago, giving the Cartwheel an inner ring of stars encircled by a brighter ring of younger stars.

From most of the United States, Sculptor, the sculptor’s workshop, is low in the southeast in early evening. You need a dark sky to make out any of the constellation’s stars, and a good imagination to “see” a pattern in them.

Look for Regulus, the brightest star of Leo, standing close above the Moon as they climb into good view by 1:30 or 2 tomorrow morning. The star will be a little farther from the Moon at dawn.

Today is Martinmas, one of the cross-quarter days, which occur roughly halfway between a solstice and an equinox. In many cultures, these days marked the start of the seasons. Martinmas honors Saint Martin of Tours, who died in the year 397.

The Pleiades star cluster is just climbing into view in the evening twilight, in the east-northeast. The cluster looks like a tiny dipper, at the shoulder of the bull. In Hawaii, this appearance marked the beginning of a new year. The date was known as Makahiki.

The Moon shoots the gap between some bright companions tonight: the planet Jupiter and the star Pollux, the brighter “twin” of Gemini. They climb into good view by about 10:30 or 11, and stand high overhead at dawn tomorrow.

Grus, the crane, strolls low across the southern horizon in early evening, with its long neck extending well up into the sky. The crane is to the lower right of Fomalhaut, the brightest star in that region.