Сalihand 02:40 video

Test video for storiteca

I'm Jane Houston Jones from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, and this is what November's sky has for you. It's a binocular month: the Moon, a few star clusters, a close pairing of Venus and Jupiter, and a comet that's still bright enough to chase.

What you'll get here:

Where and when to catch the Venus–Jupiter pairing before dawn, and how to do it safely
Three meteor showers, their peaks, and the honest rates to expect
The three mornings when the Moon glides past a star cluster
Saturn and Mercury at dusk, and a greenish comet for binoculars

Venus meets Jupiter before dawn

You can't miss bright Venus in the pre-dawn sky. This month Venus pairs up with Jupiter on the morning of November 13th, as they did in 2015 and 2016 — though in those years the two planets appeared a little closer together than they will this year.

You'll have to be looking very low on the east-southeast horizon, about 45 minutes before sunrise. Protect your eyes: don't aim your binoculars directly at the Sun, and don't look at the approaching sunrise with unaided eyes or telescopes either.

Venus and Jupiter sit very low in the east-southeast — this is the view about 45 minutes before sunrise on November 13th. 00:27

Three meteor showers, none of them rich

There are three meteor showers this month, but none of them will present high numbers of meteors at their peak.

Shower	Peak	Expected rate	Character
Leonids	November 17, moonless	no more than 10 per hour around 3 a.m.	—
Taurids (northern and southern branches)	—	about 5 per hour	slow, bright meteors are common
November Orionids	the 28th	no more than 3 per hour	swift

The Leonids peak on a moonless November 17th, with the height of the shower around 3:00 a.m. The northern and southern sub-branches of the Taurid meteor shower offer sparse counts, but those slow, bright meteors make up for it. The nearby November Orionids are the opposite of the Taurids — swift, but thin.

The Leonid radiant on a moonless November 17th — around 3 a.m. is the height of the shower. 01:06

The Moon tours three star clusters

The Moon glides by three beautiful star clusters in the morning sky this month, and a pair of binoculars will let you resolve the individual stars in each one.

The Pleiades and the Moon on the 5th
The Messier 35 (M35) cluster and the Moon on the 7th
The Beehive cluster and the Moon on the 10th

The Moon beside the Pleiades on the 5th — binoculars split the cluster into individual stars. 01:41

Saturn and Mercury at dusk

Meanwhile, at dusk, catch Saturn as it dips closer to the western horizon. It pairs up with Mercury on the 24th through the 28th.

Saturn dipping toward the western horizon with Mercury alongside, the 24th through the 28th. 02:03

A binocular comet: C/2017 O1

Comet C/2017 O1, discovered only in July by the All-Sky Automated Survey for Supernovae, came close to the Sun in October and should still be a binocular-friendly magnitude 7 or 8 greenish object in November.

Use Polaris, the North Star, as a guide, and look in the east to north-east sky in the late evening.

Polaris as the guide star for finding comet C/2017 O1 in the late-evening east-to-northeast sky. 02:16

You can find out about all of NASA's missions at www.nasa.gov. That's all for this month.