Between 5 and 5:30 am, Leo the Lion is high in the south, Orion and his faithful hunting dog Canis Major are tiptoeing toward the southwestern horizon and anyone watching these characters is probably shivering with delight.

Well, maybe not delight.

Sirius, the brightest star of our night sky, is low in the southwest and Jupiter, even brighter, is drifting toward the west-northwest, but a more interesting meet-up is happening in the opposite part of the sky.

Spica, the blue-white gem of the constellation Virgo, will rise in the east-southeast a little after 4 am.  Following Spica will be the planet Venus, brighter than Sirius, even brighter than Jupiter.  Until the morning moon appears at the end of the month, Venus will shine brighter than any other natural night time object and will easily overshadow the pale yellow light rising below it.  In a small telescope, however, that yellow light, the planet Saturn, is the most spectacular of these three.

Venus is the brightest of the trio because it is closer to the sun and more reflective than Saturn., but also because it is much closer to us.  Light reflected from Venus takes 11 minutes to reach our eyes, light from Saturn nearly an hour and a half.  Light from Spica travels more than 250 years before we see it.

The distant planets, Jupiter and Saturn, move slowly in their orbits, shifting position gradually from night to night.  The inner planets, Mercury and Venus, move much more rapidly.  In the next few days Venus will drift lower and on the mornings of November 26th and 27th it will slip past Saturn.  On December 10th, a crescent moon will hover to the right of Saturn and the following morning will pass to the right of Venus.  The two silvery objects will be bright enough to see as night fades into the dawn of the new day.


	 	 	 Keep looking up!
	 	 	 - Bob Hamlin
	 	 	 <rhamlinatdartmouth.edu>
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