Welcome to the University of Texas Skywatchers Report for Monday November 2nd through Sunday November 8th.
The moon is at third quarter on Sunday the 8th so we’ll have a waning gibbous moon for all of this week.
Jupiter and Saturn are up in the south-southwest as the sky darkens after sundown. Jupiter is setting at 10:10 p.m. at midweek, followed by Saturn at 10:30 p.m.
Mars is rising at 4:15 p.m. so it is about 20 degrees above the horizon shortly after sunset. Mars is setting at 4:45 a.m. at midweek and is still very bright in our skies, although it has already faded a little since its closest approach to the Earth in early October.
Over in the early morning eastern skies, Venus is rising at 4:15 a.m., about two and a half hours before sunrise. Mercury follows at 5:30 a.m., about an hour and 15 minutes before sunrise.
In space anniversaries this week, Monday November 2nd marks 20 years since the Expedition 1 crew arrived onboard the International Space Station and began a streak of human occupation that continues to this day. The first crew consisted of astronaut William Shepherd and cosmonauts Yuri Gidzenko, and Sergei Kirkalev who launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Khazakhstan on October 31, 2000 and returned to Earth onboard the Space Shuttle Discovery on March 21, 2001.
All public viewing events on UT campus telescopes are on hold for the remainder of 2020. We will update the website outreach.as.utexas.edu with a new schedule when we are able to resume viewing.
While you’re waiting for in-person telescope viewing to resume, you can tune in to McDonald Observatory live streams from west Texas. You can view past events on the McDonald Observatory YouTube channel and you can follow the observatory on Twitter, Facebook and at McDonaldObservatory.org to be notified of future events.
Thank you for calling the University of Texas Skywatchers Report.
