November 2025

This month, Mercury transitions from evening to morning object. It’s already hard to see in the evening sky for most observers at the month’s start, especially in the northern hemisphere. From high northern latitudes, it’s just not possible. From middle northern latitudes, it’s a challenge with the glow of sunset still strong as the planet sets. The messenger is near Mars in the sky, so the red planet isn’t easy either. For those who can see both, Mercury is heading westward against the stars at first. It gets as close as 3.9° from Antares on the 9^th. Then it turns around and meets Mars on the 13^th. The two planets appear 0.9° apart. One week later, Mercury is in conjunction with the sun. Some morning observers can find it at the end of November with Venus nearby. They’re closest on the 25^th. Spotting very brilliant Venus shouldn’t be too hard, but Mercury may require binoculars to pick it out of the sunrise glow. Mercury will be retrograde from the 9^th to the 29^th. It’s at perihelion on the 23^rd at 0.31 astronomical units from the sun.

Meanwhile, in the evening, Mars continues a trek through Scorpius late in the month. It’s 4.0° from Antares on the 18^th. A very young crescent moon passes by the planet on the 21^st. The planet continues getting harder to see from everywhere on Earth through the end of the month. Mars has its southward equinox on the 29^th.

The moon is between first quarter and full when it passes by Saturn and Neptune on the 2^nd. Those two planets remain fairly close in the sky as they get higher along the eastern side of the sky dome by dusk. Earlier this year, we were denied an edge-on view of Saturn’s rings while the planet was near conjunction with the sun. We almost get a make-up for it this month and next. The orbits of Earth and Saturn line up to about a 3° inclination to each other in early December. So look at the planet in a telescope and see a very thin-looking ring belt around it. Saturn appears stationary in the last days of this month. It has been retrograde and resumes direct motion on the 28^th.

Uranus is slowly moving in a region sort of between the Pleiades and the Hyades. The moon is just past full when it passes by the planet on the 6^th. There’ll be an occultation of the Pleiades that night too, mainly for viewers in Asia. Uranus is at opposition on the 21^st. It will be 18.5 astronomical units from us.

Jupiter rises in late evening. It’s on the eastern side of Gemini. The moon will be closest to Jupiter on the 10^th, the same night Jupiter’s closest to Pollux. Jupiter will appear stationary for much of the month as it’s slowly prograde until the 11^th and then retrograde until next March.

Some observers get to see the moon pass right in front of Regulus on the 12^th Universal Time. You have to be pretty far north. Northern Greenland and Svalbard get the view.

As already alluded to, Venus remains a morning object. But it’s leaving the morning sky. Its brightness makes it much easier to track in the glow of sunrise or sunset than other planets. The planet appears closest to Spica, the brightest star in Virgo, on the 2^nd. Look for a thin, waning crescent moon near Spica on the morning of the 17^th. Venus will be below them although perhaps not visible until Spica and the moon are getting hard to see in the light of the coming sunrise. The moon will be close by on the 19^th. That’s a day before new moon, so if you have trouble spotting moons within a day of new, you can expect some trouble spotting Venus.

Leonid meteor shower

The Leonid meteor shower peaks on the 17th. And the waning moon won’t cast off much light to spoil the view of up to 15 per hour. The Leonid shower is the one that frightened a lot of people in the eastern United States in 1833. Earth passed through a dense dust stream and dozens of meteors per second lit up. And that helped advance our understanding of outer space. Prior to that, nobody was sure where meteors came from. Scientists thought they must be solely an atmospheric phenomenon, like clouds and lightning. However, so many meteors lighting up at once enabled astronomer Denison Olmsted to observe that they all seemed to be coming from the same point in Leo. He concluded they were entering the atmosphere from space.

The Leonid shower has put on some good shows since, but none quite that spectacular. Later in the 19^th century, astronomers studying meteors came to realize there are more meteors close to certain dates and those meteors also tend to come from certain points in the sky. We still get random stray meteors every night. But now we understood that they’re not all random strays. We understand the showers come from dust left behind by comets and asteroids. In the Leonids’ case, the comet is Tempel-Tuttle, named after William Tempel of the Marseille Observatory in France and Horace Tuttle of Harvard College in the U.S. They discovered the comet independently of each other in 1865. Comet Tempel-Tuttle orbits in 33 years and will be back next in 2031.

The moon’s circumstances this month

Phases – full on the 5^th, last quarter on the 12^th, new on the 20^th, first quarter on the 28^th. This month’s full moon is the closest of the year.

Declinations – northern lunistice on the 8^th at 28.4 degrees, goes south over the equator on the 15^th, southern lunistice on the 22^nd at 28.3 degrees, and goes north over the equator on the 29^th.

Distances – perigee on the 5^th at 356,800 km, apogee on the 20^th at 406,800 km.

The moon occults Regulus on the 12^th UT. Northern Greenland, Svalbard, northern Novaya Zemlya and other Arctic regions get the view.