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Briefing for November 2026

This Month's Sky

A dark first half and a bright second half. The New Moon on November 9 opens the best evenings of the month for faint targets, Mars and Jupiter line up just over a degree apart before dawn on November 15 and 16, and the Leonids peak on the night of the 17th into the 18th. A supermoon Full Moon on November 24 then brightens the late-month sky.

Last verified: November 7, 2026.

4Deep Sky Targets

9Sky Events

2Briefing Stories

Best Deep Sky Targets

Where to point your optics this month

The darkest evenings run from about November 3 to 14: the Moon rises after midnight early in the window, and by the 14th it sets before 9 PM at mid-northern latitudes, with the New Moon on November 9 in between. After First Quarter on November 17 the Moon lights the evening sky; it sets around local midnight on the Leonid night, so the dark hours are the ones before dawn. The Full Moon on November 24 washes out faint detail for several nights.

Galaxy

Andromeda Galaxy (M31)

M31 / NGC 224 · Andromeda · Beginner

Binoculars or any telescope; naked eye from a dark site — Nearly overhead around 9 PM local time, still about 55° up at midnight. Best from the Northern Hemisphere.

Credit: NASA, ESA, J. Dalcanton, B. F. Williams, L.C. Johnson (University of Washington)

Blue-white stars of the Pleiades surrounded by wisps of blue reflection nebulosity

Cluster

The Pleiades (M45)

M45 · Taurus · Beginner

Naked eye, binoculars or a wide-field telescope — Well up by 9 PM and highest around midnight, about 70° up from mid-northern latitudes. Both hemispheres.

Credit: NASA, ESA and AURA/Caltech

Nebula

The Orion Nebula (M42)

M42 / NGC 1976 · Orion · Beginner

Binoculars or any telescope; a nebula filter helps from town — Rises around 9 PM, clear of the horizon haze by 11 PM and highest around 2 AM. Both hemispheres.

Credit: NASA, ESA, M. Robberto (Space Telescope Science Institute/ESA) and the Hubble Space Telescope Orion Treasury Project Team

Galaxy

NGC 6946 — the "Fireworks Galaxy"

NGC 6946 · Cepheus · Advanced

Larger aperture and dark skies; the New Moon window is the time for it — Best in the evening, about 55° up at 8 PM and 40° at 10 PM from mid-northern latitudes. Northern Hemisphere only.

Credit: NASA/ESA Hubble

Solar & Lunar Eclipses

No solar or lunar eclipses occur this month.

Monthly Astronomy Calendar

November 1 (UTC)Third Quarter Moon — The Moon reaches Third Quarter at 20:28 UTC on November 1. It rises around midnight and is still up after sunrise, so the evenings are already dark.

November 9 (UTC)New Moon — New Moon at 07:02 UTC on November 9. With no Moon in the sky at night, the evenings around this date are the best of the month for faint nebulae and galaxies.

November 16 (UTC)Mars and Jupiter 1.2° Apart — Mars passes about 1.2° north of Jupiter, closest around 02:00 UTC on November 16. Look southeast before sunrise on the mornings of November 15 and 16: Jupiter is the brighter point of light and reddish Mars sits beside it, not far from Leo's star Regulus. The two are only lined up from our point of view; they are still far apart in space.

November 17 (UTC)Leonids Peak — This year's peak of the Leonids meteor shower.

November 17 (UTC)First Quarter Moon — First Quarter Moon at 11:48 UTC on November 17. The half-lit Moon sets around local midnight, which leaves the pre-dawn hours dark for the Leonids.

November 20 (UTC)Mercury at Greatest Western Elongation — Mercury stands 20° west of the Sun at 23:35 UTC on November 20. It is a morning apparition best seen from the Northern Hemisphere, where it sits only about 7° high an hour before sunrise on November 21; from southern mid-latitudes it stays at or below the horizon.

November 24 (UTC)Beaver Moon (Full Moon) — Supermoon — The Moon is Full at 14:54 UTC on November 24, about a day before its closest approach to Earth (perigee on November 25 at 21:02 UTC). It rises around sunset and washes out faint deep-sky detail for several nights. NASA lists it as the first of three consecutive supermoons, in November, December and January.

November 25 (UTC)Uranus at Opposition — Uranus reaches opposition at 22:27 UTC on November 25, up from dusk to dawn at its closest and brightest of the year. At magnitude 5.6 it is just at the naked-eye limit under very dark skies; binoculars or a small telescope show a tiny blue-green disc, though the bright Moon makes it harder to find.

November 30 (UTC)Moon Passes Jupiter and Regulus — The waning gibbous Moon (about 55% lit) passes about 1° from Jupiter around 08:00 UTC on November 30, about 1° from Regulus around 14:00 UTC, and about 3° from Mars around 17:00 UTC. Look high in the south before dawn on November 30: from Europe to the Americas the Moon sits within about 3° of Jupiter, with Regulus and Mars close by. Times are for closest approach as seen from the centre of the Earth.

Sky Events

A meteor streaks across the night sky during an annual meteor shower, long-exposure photograph

Illustrative photo from a previous meteor shower. Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

New MoonNovember 9 (UTC)

Mars and Jupiter 1.2° ApartNovember 16 (UTC)

Leonids PeakNovember 17 (UTC)

Beaver Moon (Full Moon) — SupermoonNovember 24 (UTC)

Uranus at OppositionNovember 25 (UTC)

Moon Passes Jupiter and RegulusNovember 30 (UTC)

Space Briefing

What matters heading into November

Mars

Japan's MMX Probe Is on Its Way to Mars's Moons

JAXA's Martian Moons eXploration spacecraft launched on time on an H3 rocket from Tanegashima at 4:41:03 a.m. JST on October 20 (19:41 UTC on October 19) and is now on its way to Mars. JAXA's schedule has the journey taking about a year, then 2027 to 2030 at Phobos, including two soft landings to collect a sample of about 10 grams, and a capsule returning to Earth in 2031.

October 20, 2026 (JST)

Deep Space

Voyager 1 Reaches One Light-Day From Earth

NASA says Voyager 1 will cross one light-day at 5:16:07 a.m. EST on November 18 (10:16:07 UTC), about 26 billion kilometers (16 billion miles) away. No other human-made object has been that far. A radio signal takes 24 hours to reach it and another 24 hours to bring the reply back, so a command and its answer take two days.

November 18, 2026

A night sky chart facing southeast around 5 a.m. on November 15, with Mars and Jupiter side by side high in the sky, bright Venus low near the horizon between east and southeast, and the stars Arcturus, Procyon and Sirius labeled nearby

Image of the Month

Mars and Jupiter, side by side before dawn on November 15 and 16

NASA/JPL's chart for the morning of November 15 shows Mars and Jupiter about 1.2° apart in the southeast before sunrise, with Venus low near the horizon. Jupiter is the brighter of the pair, with reddish Mars right beside it. Binoculars show both in one field of view, and the pairing is just as close the next morning.

Sky chart from NASA/JPL's What's Up: November 2026 (science.nasa.gov). Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Editor's Observation

"The best night I had this month wasn't the clearest one — it was the one where I finally slowed down enough to actually look, instead of just capturing."

— Santiago Iván Miró, founder and editor of ORIVON

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