The Pleiades are the star of the November sky with a...

Chances are you’ll come across some products named after a celestial object later this month. A notable brand are Suburu cars. Consisting of six stars, one of which is now more prominent, their badge is the badge of a conglomerate founded by six Japanese manufacturers in the 1950s. Suburu also happens to be the Japanese name for the Pleiades star cluster in Taurus.

Often better known as the Seven Sisters, the compact shoal is now visible over the eastern skyline after dark, with five or six of its brightest members easy to spot at first glance. Some observers have suggested that it looks like a tiny version of The Plow, which is a very good description.

While some additional stars can be picked out with the naked eye, the Pleiades are truly spectacular with binoculars. The field is littered with glittering shards of cut crystal, and the blue-and-white light from these suns suggests their youth.

The cluster is approximately 115 million years old and is approximately 445 light years away. The light we see this month began its journey just before Galileo first sketched the Pleiades through a telescope in the winter of 1609/10. A drawing in his great work Siderius Nuncius shows a few dozen stars.

We now know more than a thousand individuals in the group, all of whom were born in the same region of space. In time, the gravitational influence of our galaxy will disrupt the cluster and the Pleiades will go their separate ways. Long exposures show a scene enveloped in gas and dust illuminated by starlight. However, this is a chance encounter with an interstellar cloud, as the cluster’s embryonic material disintegrated a long time ago.

Because they are close to the heavenly equator, the Pleiades are visible all over the world and woven into various myths. They have descriptive names like those listed in An Gúms Foclóir Réalteolaíochta like a TÉillín (“brood” or “clutch”). a Streoillín (“stray line”) and a Tréidín (“herd”). Indeed, the similarity to a bird’s flight is noted by many early cultures.

The Pleiades were often associated with the onset of months of cold or festive days for the souls of the dead, as their climax at midnight in winter and for Druids was the festival of Samhain. The appearance of the cluster is still being measured by some indigenous people to predict whether it will be too wet or dry to plant plants, while also supposed to describe the sailing season in the Mediterranean.

Another prominent star cluster called Hyades is easy to miss in Taurus. This more dispersed group has a V-shaped pattern that points away from the orange star Aldebaran, which is not a member itself as it is only half that far away. Much older than the Pleiades, the Hyades 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 disappeared after her marriage to a mortal. Interestingly, we find references to this “lost” Pleiad in stories from around the world. Some have suggested that the star experienced a real loss of brightness in the past, but other stories mention that another Pleiad is missing. The riddle still persists, just as the beautiful sisters continue to captivate and enchant these evenings.

The last quarter moon falls on November 8th, the new moon on November 15th, and the first quarter on November 22nd, with the full moon on the 30th coinciding with a partial penumbral eclipse.

These types of eclipses are more subtle, as the moon only dips into the more diffuse outer parts of the earth’s shadow cast in space.

The eclipse starts on the morning of the 30th at 7:32 a.m., but you won’t notice anything until just before the moonset at 8:12 a.m. That’s more of a hope, to be honest, and it’s assumed to mute the moon’s glare at the bottom, which can help bring out very light spots near the top of the disk. We’ll miss the Eclipse max at 9.42am as it occurs from here after the moonset.

Mercury is visible in the morning sky throughout November, but is highest over the southeastern skyline on the 10th around 6.45am. It is at the bottom left of Venus and near Spica at this time, but is slightly brighter than the star. The moon also serves as a guide when it is around on the morning of the 13th and 14th.

Venus rises three hours before the sun in the month and dominates the eastern sky before the first blushes of dawn appear. It seems to shrink the gap to Mercury every day, but on the 13th it doesn’t come closer than 12 degrees away (a little more than a fist at arm’s length). Their separation remains static for about a week before expanding again when Mercury dives into the sun.

Mars is stepping back in the rearview mirror, so to speak, as Earth has now overtaken it in our faster orbit. But the planet is still smoldering bright orange in the eastern sky as soon as darkness falls and remains visible until the early hours of the morning. The gibbous moon is near Mars on the evening of the 25th.

Jupiter and Saturn fit into the same low-powered binocular field of view in early November, but are only half as far apart by the end of the month as the distance between them slowly narrows. The two planets are in the southwest on these evenings and set in after 8 p.m. Find her on the 19th right at the top of the moon.

Two meteor showers active in November are the Leonids and the Northern Taurids. Rates of the former are usually very low during their peak on the 16th, but reach storm levels about every 33 years when the associated parent comet returns to the inner solar system, which happens next in 2032.

The northern taurids peak on the night of November 11th and generally have low rates as well. But they can cause surprises and sometimes create slow, bright fireballs.

Space flight

Shortly after the October article was published, a new launch date was set for Crew Dragon’s next mission to the International Space Station. The mission is now scheduled to start on November 11th and bring four more members of the newest expedition crew to the station.

The morning passes of the ISS run until November 9th, after which it changes to the evening sky from November 20th. Forecasts for your location can be calculated under the sky above.

Chang’e, named after the Chinese moon goddess, is China’s lunar exploration series that began in 2007 when Chang’e 1 reached lunar orbit. Chang’e 5 is a robotic sample return mission scheduled to start in late November. It is currently planned to collect around 2 kg of material under the surface of the moon to return to Earth later.

John Flannery is a longtime amateur astronomer with an interest in the history and lore of the heavens, as well as astronomical phenomena that can be observed with the naked eye. He is a member of the Irish Astronomical Society