Keep your eyes on the southeastern predawn sky for the next several days – Jupiter returns to the morning sky and has a multi-day conjunction with Venus. The planets will appear closest on the morning of the 13th. The waning gibbous Moon and is high in the southwestern sky before dawn; the Moon will be at third quarter Nov. 11th. I actually got to see the Moon this morning in a rare break through the Michigan clouds! Saturn is barely visible above the treetops to the southwest after sunset. Soon, Saturn will be behind the Sun, in relation to the Earth, and will not be visible again until early March of 2018. The Sun has no visible sunspots again this week…  it looks pretty boring through a white-light telescope. But the view through a hydrogen-alpha telescope (or from the Solar Dynamics Observatory) is a little more exciting. Here’s a close-up of prominences on the Sun’s eastern limb: The coronal hole … Continue reading →