There is a lot to see in the southern skies this month with just the naked eye or basic equipment. Start off by looking for the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) west of the constellation Pictor, and the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) in Tucana. These are both irregular galaxies close to the Milky Way. A small telescope is all you need to explore the sparkling star clusters as well as the Tarantula Nebula (NGC 2070), nestled within the LMC. The globular cluster 47 Tucanae can be seen with the naked eye as a hazy star very close to the SMC. A large-aperture telescope shows its countless stars packed together in a dense ball. Looking towards the north-east, the Hyades and Pleiades open star clusters make excellent binocular targets. 

In the east you can locate Canis Major, which is hard to miss because it is home to the blazing star Sirius. In Canis Major, the open clusters NGC 2362 and M41 make for good small-telescope targets. Also coming into view in the east are Orion and Taurus. It is easy to identify Orion, as its brightest stars are blue-white Rigel (Beta Orionis) and red Betelgeuse (Alpha Orionis).

The Leonid meteor shower is active each November, and this year the Leonids will peak overnight on November 17-18. The shower is called Leonids because its radiant, or the point in the sky where the meteors seem to emerge from, lies in the constellation Leo. The Leonids occur when the Earth passes through the debris left by Comet Tempel-Tuttle, which takes about 33 years to make one orbit of the sun.This month’s conjunctions, which is when two astronomical objects appear close to each other in the sky, include the moon with Venus on November 5, then with Saturn on November 11, with Jupiter on November 18, and with Mars on November 21.

By Nerida Langcake
This article appeared in the November 2024 issue of the Mornington Peninsula Magazine.