A telescope with a wide-field eyepiece will show both in the same field of view, yet they will look stunningly different. Venus has a white disk that spans 22" and is 55 percent lit, while Mars appears dull orange and sports a nearly fully illuminated disk that measures just 4" across.
In the following days, watch as the waning crescent Moon passes by the planet trio. On the 6th, the 23-percent-lit Moon stands a few degrees to Jupiter’s right; on the 7th, Luna (now 16 percent illuminated) appears within 2° of both Venus and Mars. Grab your camera to capture the scenes on these two mornings. From mid-northern latitudes, all these objects rise before 3 a.m. local time. And shortly after 5 a.m., the eastern sky starts to brighten with the approach of dawn, adding gorgeous twilight colors to your images.
Venus and Mars continue to stretch out across Virgo during November. Venus moves faster relative to the background stars, passing 1° south of 3rd-magnitude Gamma Virginis on the 18th and 4° north of 1st-magnitude Spica on the 28th. (Through a telescope in November’s final days, the planet appears 18" across and two-thirds lit.) Mars’ slower eastward motion has it sliding 1° south of Gamma Vir on November 30.
Keen-eyed observers might be able to glimpse
Mercury on November’s first morning. The innermost planet then shines brightly at magnitude –1.0 but lies just 4° high in the east-southeast 30 minutes before sunrise. Mercury passes behind the Sun from our perspective on the 17th and will return to view on December evenings.
Many people avoid observing around the time of Full Moon because its light washes out fainter objects and renders brighter ones more difficult to see. But skywatchers will be glued to the
Full Moon the night of November 25/26 as it passes 1st-magnitude Aldebaran, the brightest star in Taurus the Bull.
Observers in Canada and the northern United States will see our satellite occult (pass in front of) the star in the predawn hours of November 26, while those in the southern tier of states will witness the Moon passing just north of Aldebaran. Viewers located along a narrow track that stretches from the California-Oregon border to South Carolina will experience a grazing occultation. Seen through a telescope, the star will disappear behind lunar mountains and then reappear through valleys, often many times within a few minutes. The event occurs at roughly 6 a.m. EST (3 a.m. PST), though the timing varies depending on your location. Check out Brad Timerson’s predictions at
www.iota.timerson.net for precise times for your site.