New moon falls at 1:02 AM on Monday, so this is the darkest week of November: the Moon is absent until Wednesday evening and sets before 11 PM all week. Use it for the Northern Taurids on Thursday night, for Uranus two weeks from opposition, and for the first look at Orion. Before dawn, Mars closes to within a degree and a half of Jupiter by the weekend and Mercury climbs into view below Venus. Times below are for Dallas in Central Standard Time; every page linked here converts them to your city.

The Moon: new on Monday, a young crescent from Wednesday

  • Monday, November 9: new moon at 1:02 AM. Nothing to see; the Moon rises and sets with the Sun.
  • Tuesday, November 10: a 3 percent crescent sets at 6:12 PM, only 44 minutes after the Sun and already on the horizon by the time the sky darkens. A binocular challenge at best.
  • Wednesday, November 11: the first easy evening Moon, 7 percent lit and 8 degrees up in the south-west at 6:10 PM, setting at 6:59 PM. Look for earthshine on the dark side.
  • Thursday to Sunday: 11, 18, 25 and 34 percent, setting at 7:51, 8:47, 9:45 and 10:43 PM. Earthshine is strongest on Thursday and Friday.

Sunset moves from 5:29 PM on Monday to 5:25 PM on Sunday, and the sky is fully dark by about 6:50 PM. The moon calendar has the times for your city; our guide to earthshine explains the glow on the crescent.

Thursday night: the Northern Taurids peak

The Northern Taurid meteor shower peaks around Thursday, November 12 (3:16 AM Central by our calendar; other forecasts put it a day or two earlier), with the 11 percent Moon setting at 7:51 PM and the radiant in Taurus high from 10 PM onward. Expect only a few meteors an hour, but slow, bright ones; with the Southern Taurids still active, this is the best fireball week of the year. Our Taurid guide has the plan, and the Northern Taurids page gives the peak time for your zone.

All week: dark evenings for Uranus, Orion and the deep sky

With no Moon after mid-evening, this is the week to find Uranus, magnitude 5.6 in Taurus about 5.5 degrees to the lower left of the Pleiades: 22 degrees up in the east at 8 PM, 47 degrees by 10 PM and nearly overhead at 1 AM. It reaches opposition on November 25, when the full Moon will be in the way, so now is better; our binocular guide to finding it comes on Thursday. Orion clears the eastern horizon by about 9 PM and stands well up by midnight, with the Orion Nebula visible as a fuzzy star in the sword. Saturn is 28 to 31 degrees up in the east at dusk, highest in the south around 9 PM, at magnitude 0.8 to 0.9, with Neptune nearby for telescopes. The Saturn page has its height hour by hour.

Before dawn: Mars closes on Jupiter, Mercury appears

Mars and Jupiter are 2.9 degrees apart on Monday morning and 1.3 degrees by Sunday, 70 degrees high in the south at 6 AM at magnitudes 0.7 and -2.1, a week from their November 16 conjunction. Our conjunction guide has the day-by-day separations. Venus is 18 degrees up in the south-east at civil dawn on Monday and 22 by the weekend, at magnitude -4.5. Below and left of it, Mercury climbs out of the twilight: 8 degrees up at dawn on Tuesday at magnitude 1.3, 12 degrees up on Saturday at magnitude 0.1, on its way to greatest elongation next Friday. Look about 40 minutes before sunrise (sunrise is 6:52 to 6:57 AM) with a clear south-eastern horizon; binoculars will find Mercury first, then the eye. Venus itself is worth a look in binoculars this week, a fat crescent 50 arcseconds across and only 11 percent lit, and it is closing on the star Spica, which it will pass at 2 degrees next weekend. The November planets guide covers all of them.

Sunrise, sunset and the dark hours

Sunrise moves from 6:52 AM on Monday to 6:57 AM on Sunday and sunset from 5:29 to 5:25 PM. Astronomical twilight ends at about 6:53 PM and begins again at about 5:30 AM, so there are more than ten and a half hours of full darkness a night, the most since February, and this week the Moon takes none of them after 11 PM. It is the best week of the month for faint objects: the Andromeda Galaxy overhead at 8 PM, the Double Cluster between Perseus and Cassiopeia, and the winter Milky Way rising through Orion after midnight.

Looking ahead

Monday, November 16: Mars passes 1.2 degrees from Jupiter at dawn, and the Lunar X shows on the Moon that evening for Europe; see our guide to the Lunar X. Tuesday and Wednesday, November 17 and 18: the Leonids peak before dawn with the first-quarter Moon setting around midnight; our Leonids guide has the hours. Friday, November 20: Mercury at greatest elongation, its best morning of the month. The November guide has the whole month, and if you garden, this new-moon week is the traditional start of the leafy-crop window on the planting calendar.