The Leonid meteor shower (so named because the meteor trails trace back to a radiant point in the constellation Leo the Lion) will likely peak locally after 12:00 am the night of November 16th-17th.  The constellation Leo will be located directly south of the Big Dipper’s bowl and, as an added bonus, Jupiter should be glowing brightly nearby.  The Moon will be a small crescent so the sky should be fairly dark.  The Leonid meteors streak at a very high speed so they often generate fireballs.

The Rosetta spacecraft has been traveling to Comet 67P/Churyunov-Gerasimenko for ten years and the European Space Agency will broadcast a live landing on the comet Wednesday evening, November 12th, at 9:00 pm on the Science Channel.  Both the Rosetta spacecraft and its robotic lander, Philae, will accompany the comet as it  orbits around the Sun reaching perihelion (minimum) in August 2015.  Comet 67P is a member of the Jupiter family of comets and its orbit carries it from approximately 5.8 au  (an astronomical unit is is a unit of length, roughly the distance from the Earth to the Sun) to 1.7 au.

The planet Jupiter (and its four bright moons) rises around midnight on November 1st and two hours earlier by the end of the month and shines brightly in the constellation Leo the Lion.  The best viewing time, of course,  is a couple of hours after it rises higher in the sky.  Venus and Saturn are too close to the Sun to see in November.  Mars remains the brightest object in the southwestern sky as it hovers near the Sagittarius Teapot asterism and sets more than three hours after the Sun early in the month.

Two excellent binocular objects almost directly overhead in November are the Andromeda Galaxy (M31) and the Pinwheel Galaxy (M33), both members of the Local Group that includes our Milky Way Galaxy.   Start at the Square of Pegasus (directly overhead) and proceed to its northeastern corner where two  arms of stars project out to the northeast from this corner.  The Andromeda Galaxy will appear as a hazy oval blur just north of the second star on the most northern arm of stars.  The Pinwheel Galaxy will appear southeast of the second star in the most eastern arm of stars.  The Andromeda Galaxy is roughly twice the size of our Milky Way Galaxy and the Pinwheel Galaxy is roughly one-half the size of the Milky Way.