November always has a rather dreary reputation: maybe you know that poem by Thomas Hood that ends ‘No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds, November!’ In a way the sky reflects this theme, because the constellations looking south at this time of year are dim compared with the sparkling views of late summer and winter. There’s a good reason for this: at this time of year the band of the Milky Way is lower in the sky, and we are looking out of the plane of the galaxy into the rest of the universe.
Not that the Milky Way has gone altogether – it’s over in the west, where you can still see the stars of autumn, and indeed the increasingly inappropriately named Summer Triangle of Vega, Deneb and Altair and their associated delights that were described in the previous months’ pages remain on view, though lower in the sky. Over in the east there are other parts of the Milky Way, about which more next month.
This month there is an excellent signpost in the shape of the Square of Pegasus. This might be larger than you might imagine, and its stars are all of second magnitude so they aren’t the brightest, but it is easily spotted nevertheless, even in city skies. Pegasus is the Flying Horse. Take a diagonal from top left to bottom right and you can find the stars of Aquarius. Everyone has heard of this – the Age of Aquarius and all that mullarkey – but probably not many have actually seen it. Don’t get too excited: it’s a rather faint constellation, which just goes to show what happens when you divide the sky into 12 and try to make the stars fit into the notion that the position of the planets has anything to do with what humans get up to.
Speaking of faint constellations in the zodiac, try and find the next one: Pisces, the Fishes. Its stars are a real challenge to those in towns and suburbs. The most eye-catching bit is right below the Square of Pegasus, a little group known as the Circlet, which marks the head of one of the fish. Incidentally, the plural of fish is fish and not fishes, but we have to call them the Fishes to indicate that there are more than one of them.
The right-hand side of the Square points down to the bright star Fomalhaut, which is easily overlooked as it is the most southerly first-magnitude star visible from the UK and indeed most of Europe and New York. This is in the otherwise obscure constellation of Piscis Austrinus, the Southern Fish. That’s Piscis, note (singular) and not Pisces (plural). At least the Romans knew how to do plurals.
Below Pisces is a fairly bright star, Diphda, which marks the tail of Cetus, the Sea Monster. It is also known on some maps as Deneb Kaitos. The head of the monster is just on the left edge of the map. Notice that all the constellations in this part of the sky have watery connections. It is said that this is because the Sun travelled through these constellations during the wet season in ancient Mesopotamia, which was from November to March, and flooding was a major problem. Many of our constellations date from that location and time. Incidentally, the constellations have shifted in the sky since then, due to precession, and they are now in the evening sky during those months.
From the top left edge of the Square stretches a line of stars in the constellation of Andromeda – a mythical person’s name. There’s a story here which we will tell in December. From the astronomical point of view, this is the location of one of the most famous features of the sky, the Andromeda Galaxy, catalogue number M31. Actually, this is not too hard to spot, and you can even see it from a city sky using binoculars. To find out more about this and another nearby galaxy, M33, see our Young Stargazers page on Andromeda and Pegasus.
To the east of the Square is Aries, the Ram, whose three main stars form an easily recognised triangle, and another more regular triangle, actually called Tringulum, the Triangle, which contains the nearby galaxy M33. This is visible with binoculars from a good country sky.
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