Welcome to the University of Texas Skywatchers Report for Monday November 9th through Sunday November 15th.
The new moon for the month of November is early in the morning hours of Sunday the 15th so we’ll have a waning crescent moon in our pre-dawn skies all of this week.
Jupiter and Saturn are up in the south-southwest shortly after sunset and are still visible for a few hours after twilight. Jupiter is setting at 9:45 p.m., followed by Saturn at 10:05 p.m.
Mars is still shining brightly in the east as the sky darkens and is setting at 4:15 a.m.
In the morning skies, Venus is rising at 4:25 a.m. Look for the thin waning crescent moon above Venus on Thursday morning.
Mercury is rising at 5:35 a.m. at midweek and is at its greatest elongation on Tuesday the 10th when it will be rising an hour and a half before the Sun. The very thin waning crescent moon will be above Mercury on Friday morning.
This week has several space anniversaries of note. Tuesday November 10th marks 50 years since the launch of the Soviet Luna 17 mission which carried the Lunokhod 1, the first lunar rover. The mission landed five days later and operated on the moon for 10 months.
Next up, 40 years ago on November 12th, the Voyager 1 spacecraft made its closest approach to Saturn, becoming the second mission to fly by the ringed planet. Voyager 1 also performed a close flyby of Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, to further study its atmosphere.
Finally, the European Space Agency’s Venus Express mission launched 15 years ago on November 9th. The mission entered orbit around Venus on April 11, 2006 and studied the planet for over 9 years before it deorbited into Venus’ atmosphere in January 2015.
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.
