If your household is like most American families, you’ll likely be sitting down for a traditional Thanksgiving turkey dinner with family and friends in the mid to late afternoon on Thursday, November 23.
Then, as darkness falls, some of you will probably migrate to the living room to watch football or other holiday programming on television. But if you have a large gathering of family and friends at home and your skies are mostly clear, why not invite everyone outside to check out the view? evening sky?
if any binocularsor better yet, a telescopeYou can turn this into an unforgettable family tradition in itself.
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Moon
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This year, on Thanksgiving evening, approximately 90 minutes after sunset, moon Four days before it reaches full stage, it will be in a growing gibbous stage, 85% illuminated and shining brightly in the southeastern sky.
You might think that the best time to look at the moon through a telescope is when it’s in full phase, but it’s probably worst time to look at it. When the moon is full, it tends to have a flat and one-dimensional appearance, as well as being dazzlingly bright.
In contrast, a gibbous moon is when we get a better view of the lunar landscape along the sunrise-sunset line or terminator.
The terminator is the variable line between the illuminated part of the moon and the part in shadow. Coupled with the fact that a gibbous moon offers more viewing comfort to the eye than a moon full moon Using just a telescope with a small optical power (magnification from 20x to 40x) or even good binoculars, we can see a lot of detail on its surface. When the moon is half-illuminated or in its gibbous phase, these features near the terminator stand out in sharp and clear relief.
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And two bright planets
Besides the Moon, we have two other important planets in the sky on Thanksgiving night.
We can see towards the south Saturn, shines with a calm, yellow-white glow about a third of the way across the south-southwestern sky. The famous rings begin to be seen with a telescope magnifying 30x. If you have a 4-inch (10-centimeter) telescope, a 100x eyepiece will easily bring Saturn’s most famous appendage into view.
Meanwhile, it will be much brighter and about a third of the way up in the eastern sky Jupiterit looks like a dazzling, silvery-white, twinkling star. You will see that the moon shines 20 degrees in the lower left. Tonight, Jupiter will be about “two fists” to the left of the moon, as your clenched fist held at arm’s length is roughly 10 degrees.
Binoculars held steadily will provide a brief glimpse of the four large Galilean moons first seen by us. Galileo Galilei This holiday night, a telescope will easily show the disk of the largest planet in our solar system (11 times wider than our Earth), with all four moons visible on one side of the large planet.
We can see Io as it moves away from Jupiter. EuropeCallisto and Ganymede.
stars of late autumn
If we focus on the stars and constellations, it is interesting to note that many star groups and rich Milky Way fields on summer evenings are still very visible in the western part of the sky, while the bright yellow star Capella rises in the northeast. a promise of even more dazzling fixtures to come. Because in just a few weeks, Orion and his entourage will dominate our winter skies.
Still very well located in the west Summer Triangle, Roughly isosceles figure consisting of the stars Vega, Altair and Deneb. As we move deeper into the fall season and the evenings get cooler, this configuration becomes lower and lower in the west. If you have binoculars, invite family and friends to use them to wander among the spectacular star fields of the Summer Triangle. They may have shared Galileo’s fascination more than four centuries ago when he first turned his telescope to the countless faint stars that make up the Milky Way.
High in the south-southeast, almost overhead, four bright stars can be seen forming the sky. Great Pegasus Square, a landmark of the autumn sky. And if you can see the northern horizon clearly, you’ll find a familiar sight there. Big Dipperlooks abnormally large due to “moon illusion” This causes star patterns such as the sun, moon, and even the Dipper to appear larger than normal when they are near the horizon.
Meanwhile, Queen Cassiopeia’s striking zig-zag row of five bright stars forming the letter “M” Flying high above Dipper North.
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looking back in time
The first Thanksgiving is said to have occurred in 1621. We see many stars whose light began its vast journey before our country was born. Are there any stars about 400 light years away?
Because of the difficulty of measuring parallaxes (changes in the position of distant objects as viewed from Earth), astronomers cannot determine these distances to an accuracy of one light-year. However, the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada’s 2023 “Observer’s Handbook” in its table of the 288 brightest stars lists two stars that are about 400 light-years away and are above the horizon on November evenings: the third-magnitude star Algenib in the lower left of the Great Pegasus Square in its corner and in Almach of the second magnitude, at the end of the chain of stars marking the constellation of princess Andromeda.
If you see any of these stars on your next clear night, remember that you are looking at the light that began its journey to Earth at about the same time that the first pilgrims arrived in what we now call the state of Massachusetts.
Joe Rao is an instructor and visiting professor in New York Hayden Planetarium. writes about astronomy Natural History magazine, Farmer’s Almanac and other publications. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.