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Scotland’s Sky in November, 2018
InSight probe to land on bright evening planet Mars
The maps show the sky at 21:00 GMT on the 1st, 20:00 on the 16th and 19:00 on the 30th. An arrow depicts the motion of Mars. (Click on map to enlarge)
The Summer Triangle, still high in the south at nightfall, shifts to the west by our map times as our glorious winter constellations climb in the east. Taurus with the Pleiades and its leading star Aldebaran (close to the Moon on the 23rd) stands well clear of the horizon while Orion is rising below and dominates our southern sky after midnight.
In the month that should see NASA’s InSight lander touch down on its surface, the planet Mars continues as a prominent object in the south at nightfall. Venus springs into view as a spectacular morning star but we must wait to see whether the Leonids meteor shower, which has produced some storm-force displays in the past, gives us any more than the expected few meteors this year.
InSight is due to land on the 26th on a broad plain called Elysium Planitia that straddles Mars’ equator. There it will place an ultra-sensitive seismometer directly onto the surface and cover it with a dome-like shell to shield it from the noise caused by wind and heat changes. This should be able of detect marsquakes and meteor impacts that occur all around Mars. Other InSight experiments will hammer a spike up to five metres into the ground to measure Mars’ heat flow, and further investigate the planet’s interior structure by using radio signals to track tiny wobbles in its rotation.
Until recently, Mars has remained low down as it performed a loop against the stars in the south-western corner of Capricornus. That loop, resulting entirely from our changing vantage point as the Earth overtook Mars and came within 58 million km on 31 July, took Mars more than 26° south of the sky’s equator and 3° further south than the Sun stands at our winter solstice.
Now, though, Mars is climbing east-north-eastwards on a track that will take it further north than the Sun ever gets by the time it disappears into Scotland’s night-long twilight next summer. One by-product of this motion is that Mars’ setting time is remarkably constant over the coming months, being (for Edinburgh) within 13 minutes of 23:42 GMT from now until next May.
This month sees Mars leave Capricornus for Aquarius and shrink as seen through a telescope from 12 to 9 arcseconds as it recedes from 118 million to 151 million km. Its path, indicated on our southern chart, carries it 0.5° (one Moon’s breadth) north of the multiple star Deneb Algedi, the goat’s tail, on the 5th. It almost halves in brightness, from magnitude -0.6 to 0.0, but its peak altitude above Edinburgh’s southern horizon early in the night improves from 16° to 25°, though by our map times it is sinking lower towards the south-west.
Mars is not our sole evening planet since Saturn shines at magnitude 0.6 low down in the south-west at nightfall. It is only a degree below-right of the young Moon on the 11th and sets more than 90 minutes before our map times. The two most distant planets, Neptune and Uranus, are also evening objects and may be glimpsed through binoculars at magnitudes 7.9 and 5.7 in Aquarius and Aries respectively.
Edinburgh’s sunrise/sunset times vary from 07:19/16:32 on the 1st to 08:17/15:45 on the 30th. The Moon is new on the 7th, at first quarter and below-right of Mars on the 15th, full on the 23rd and at last quarter on the 30th.
Jupiter is hidden in the solar glare as it approaches conjunction on the Sun’s far side on the 26th. Mercury stands furthest east of the Sun (23°) on the 6th but is also invisible from our northern latitudes.
Venus, though, emerges rapidly from the Sun’s near side into our morning twilight where it stands to the left of the star Spica in Virgo. Shining brilliantly at magnitude -4.1, the planet rises in the east-south-east only 29 minutes before the Sun on the 1st. By the 6th, though, it rises 80 minutes before sunrise and stands 8° below and right of the impressively earthlit waning Moon. Venus itself is 58 arcseconds wide and 4% illuminated on that morning, its slender crescent being visible through binoculars. By the 30th, Venus rises four hours before the Sun, climbs to stand 23° high in the south-south-east at sunrise and appears as a 41 arcseconds and 25% sunlit crescent.
It is just as well that my previous note led on the usually neglected Draconids meteor shower because observers, at least those under clear skies, were thrilled to see it provide perhaps the best meteor show of 2018. For just a few hours around midnight on 8-9th October, the sky became alive with slow meteors at rates of up to 100 meteors per hour or more.
Leonid meteors arrive this month between the 15th and 20th, with the shower expected to hit its usually-brief peak at around 01:00 on the 18th. Although they flash in all parts of the sky, they diverge from a radiant point in the so-called Sickle of Leo which rises in the north-east before midnight and climbs high into the south before dawn. No Leonids appear before the radiant rises, but even with the radiant high in a dark sky we may see fewer than 20 per hour – all of them very swift and many of the brighter ones leaving glowing trains in their wake.
Leonid meteoroids come from Comet Tempel-Tuttle which orbits the Sun every 33 years and was last in our vicinity in 1998. There has not been a Leonids meteor storm since 2002 and we may be a decade or more away from the next one, or are we?
Diary for 2018 November
2nd 05h Moon 2.1° N of Regulus
6th 16h Mercury furthest E of Sun (23°)
7th 16h New moon
11th 16h Moon 1.5° N of Saturn
15th 15h First quarter
16th 04h Moon 1.0° S of Mars
18th 01h Peak of Leonids meteor shower
23rd 06h Full moon
23rd 22h Moon 1.7° N of Aldebaran
26th 07h Jupiter in conjunction with Sun
26th 20h InSight probe to land on Mars
27th 09h Mercury in inferior conjunction on Sun’s near side
27th 21h Moon 0.4° S of Praesepe
30th 00h Last quarter
Alan Pickup
This is a slightly revised version, with added diary, of Alan’s article published in The Scotsman on October 31st 2018, with thanks to the newspaper for permission to republish here.
Scotland’s Sky in May, 2018
Jupiter’s conspicuous opposition in the Balance
The maps show the sky at 01:00 BST on the 1st, midnight on the 16th and 23:00 on the 31st. Arrows depict the motions of Jupiter during May and of Venus from the 20th. (Click on map to enlarge)
Jupiter is at its brightest and best in the constellation of Libra, the Weighing Scales or Balance, this month. Its opposition, when it stands directly opposite the Sun, occurs on the morning of the 9th but it is prominent every night as it transits low across the south from the south-east at nightfall to the south-west before dawn.
Venus, however, outshines it in the western evening sky and both Saturn and the increasingly striking Mars follow Jupiter into the southern morning sky.
The Sun climbs another 7° northwards during May as Edinburgh’s sunrise/sunset times change from 05:29/20:52 BST on the 1st to 04:36/21:45 on the 31st. Because twilight is also lengthening, official darkness in the middle of the night lasts for under one hour by May’s end.
The Moon is at last quarter on the 8th, new on the 15th, at first quarter on the 22nd and full on the 29th.
Venus stands 20° high in the west at sunset, sinking to set in the north-west by 23:40 on the 1st and one hour later by the 31st. Brilliant at magnitude -3.9, it begins the month 6° above-right of Taurus’ brightest star, Aldebaran, and tracks east-north-eastwards between the Bull’s horns to end May in mid-Gemini, below Castor and Pollux.
The young earthlit Moon makes an impressive sight almost 6° below-left of the planet on the evening of the 17th. Three days later, as Venus joins the region of sky covered by our chart, it passes 1.0° (two Moon-diameters) above-right of the star cluster M35 whose brightest stars may be glimpsed through binoculars from their distance of some 2,800 light years. Still on the far side of its orbit, Venus approaches from 217 million to 190 million km this month as its almost-full disk swells to 13 arcseconds in diameter.
After dominating our winter nights, Orion ducks below our western horizon as the evening twilight fades at present. The Plough is overhead and Leo high in the south with its main star Regulus which has a close encounter with the first quarter Moon on the night of 21st/22nd.
By our map times, Leo sis inking in the west and Jupiter is easily the most conspicuous object in the south though it stands barely 18° high for Edinburgh. Moving westwards in Libra, it lies close to the Moon on the 27th. Its motion takes it from 4° east (left) of the well-known double star Zubenelgenubi at present to lie just 1.0° north-east of the star on the 31st.
Jupiter is 658 million km away at opposition, shines at magnitude -2.5 and shows a 45 arcseconds wide disk through a telescope. Its two main darker cloud bands, its northern and southern equatorial belts, straddle a lighter equatorial zone. The famous Great Red Spot is gradually losing its status, however, being less than half as wide as it was a century ago and currently more salmon-pink in hue than red. It sits in a bay at the southern edge of the south equatorial belt and, like the many other Jovian cloud features, is carried smartly across the disk as the planet spins in just under ten hours.
Steadily-held binoculars show the four main moons of Jupiter, Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto which change their configuration to the east and west of Jupiter from night to night, sometimes disappearing as they hide behind Jupiter or cross the disk, along with their shadows.
If Jupiter’s low elevation makes telescopic views less than sharp, this is even more the case with Saturn which rises in the south-east at our map times and is 6° lower in the sky than Jupiter as it reaches the meridian just before dawn. Saturn improves from magnitude 0.4 to 0.2 as it creeps westwards above the Teapot asterism in Sagittarius. It lies 1,392 million km away at mid-month when its oblate globe is 18 arcseconds across set within 40 by 17 arcseconds rings that have their north face inclined at 26° to our view. Look for it 4° right of the Moon on the morning of the 5th.
Less than 2° below Saturn is the globular star cluster M22, a ball of thousands of stars that lies about 10,600 light years away and formed some 12 billion years ago. At about magnitude 5.1 and visible as a hazy glow through binoculars, it was the first globular to be discovered and is brighter than M13 in Hercules, the best globular in the northern sky.
Mars lies almost 15° east of Saturn at present and rises at Edinburgh’s south-eastern horizon at 02:46 on the 1st. As it more than doubles in brightness, from magnitude -0.4 to -1.2, it also speeds 12° eastwards from Sagittarius to Capricornus so that by the 31st it rises at 01:31 and its fiery glow is unmistakable above the south-south-eastern horizon before dawn.
Catch Mars below the Moon on the morning of the 6th. Telescopically, its disk swells from 11 to 15 arcseconds as its distance falls from 126 million to 92 million km. Its approach opens the optimum window for sending probes to the planet and NASA’s InSight lander to study “marsquakes” and the Martian interior is due for launch between 5 May and 8 June.
Meteors of the Eta-Aquarids shower, debris from Comet Halley, appear until the 20th as they radiate from a point that lies low in the east for an hour or so before dawn over Scotland. The shower peaks with some moonlight interference on the 6th and brings a fine shower for watchers further south but only a handful of meteors for us.
Diary for 2018 May
Times are BST
3rd 18h Venus 7° N of Aldebaran
4th 21h Moon 1.7° N of Saturn
5th – 6th Peak of Eta Aquarids meteor shower
6th 08h Moon 2.7° N of Mars
8th 03h Last quarter
9th 02h Jupiter at opposition at distance of 658 million km
15th 13h New moon
17th 19h Moon 5° S of Venus
22nd 03h Moon 1.5° N of Regulus
22nd 05h First quarter
27th 19h Moon 4° N of Jupiter
29th 15h Full moon
Alan Pickup
