This week will be pretty cloudy, but there is a chance for some surprise clear nights towards the end of the week.

If there are some clear nights, you’ll want to wear a warm winter coat. With the windchill, the nighttime temperatures will drop into the upper teens. This also means you should leave your telescopes and binoculars outside around sunset so they can begin to thermally equilibrate with the outside temperature. This prevents dew from forming on the lens which will obstruct your astro-viewing. Sunset this week will approach 5:00 PM so optimal stargazing time begins around 6:00 PM. This week be on the lookout for the third-quarter moon, the distant planet Neptune, a Mars-moon meetup, some International Space Station fly-overs, and some dusty stellar nurseries.

The moon and mars will meet up in the morning sky on December 2

Saturday, November 27 is the third-quarter moon. It is more difficult to see the moon in this phase than the first-quarter, new moon, or full moon. This is simply because the moon rises late into the night, roughly around 12:30 AM. If you wake up early for work, you will likely see the washed-out moon high in the sky or setting in the west. Speaking of the moon, last week was the lunar eclipse. Do not worry if you missed it, there will be another lunar eclipse next May.

Jared May’s sequence of lunar eclipse images. Taken last week.

The third quarter moon rises after midnight, which makes it a less common sight for most folks.

After the sun has set any time this week, some of the brightest objects that shine in the night sky are Saturn and Jupiter. Grab your binoculars or telescope and hop from Saturn, then to Jupiter, then hop again the same distance and direction and try spotting Neptune. This outer-most planet (sorry Pluto) shines at magnitude 7.7 so it is not visible to the naked eye. Even with a telescope or binoculars, Neptune will only appear as a faint blue dot since it is a whopping 2,800,000,000 miles away from the earth.

Finding Neptune will likely require a good finder scope or an astronomy app.

Thursday, December 2nd, peer low in the eastern skies around 6:30 AM. You will see the sky slowly brightening from the rising sun and the old waning crescent nearing Mars. A pair of binoculars will be able to show the intense details of the 5% illuminated lunar surface.

The International Space Station (ISS) is an orbiting science laboratory that is as large as a football field! The ISS has huge solar panels that provide power for the astronauts and experiments on board. These solar panels (and the white-colored body of the ISS) act as a large sunlight reflector and can reflect sunlight down to the surface of the earth. To a stargazer, this reflected sunlight will cause the ISS to appear as a bright flying dot, almost as bright as Jupiter or Saturn. Here are some opportunities to see the ISS this week: Sunday November 29 6:56 PM northern sky, Tuesday November 30, 6:09 PM northern sky, and Thursday December 2 6:12 PM northern sky.

The winter skies have some great deep-sky objects. Some of the most colorful and most interesting deep-sky objects are nebulae. Some of these nebulae are very dusty and filled with gas. The hydrogen gas in these nebulae provides unlimited fuel for the baby stars and creates some interesting imaging opportunities for astrophotographers. Some of the most famous deep-sky nebulae for the winter include the Orion Nebula, Horsehead Nebula, Flame Nebula, M78, and NGC 2264. For many of these objects the surrounding gas acts as a curtain and hides the newly forming stars from view. The 10-billion-dollar James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) that will launch in December is one such tool that we will use to see through these “gas curtains”. Using infrared cameras (like the JWST) instead of visible-wavelength cameras will permit us to see through the cold gas and look at the heart of these stellar nurseries.

The weather will not be very welcoming to stargazers and astrophotographers as we move into December. Remember to dress very warm and let your astro-gear thermally equilibrate for the optimal stargazing experience. In the event of clear skies later this week, be on the lookout for the third-quarter moon, the outer-most planet Neptune, an early-morning meetup between the moon and Mars, ISS flyovers, and some deep-sky stellar nurseries.

Clear Skies!