The November sky in Spain

ORION

One of the delights to living in rural Spain is the amazing night sky in Spain with November onwards often providing a clear winter sky that shows the heavens at their best. The clocks have gone back, dusk comes early, dawn late, the television reception falls away and, as we move towards mid-winter in December, it’s worthwhile going outside and having a look at what you can see in the night sky in Spain.

You can view the night stars and planets in Spain with a naked eye but a simple pair of binoculars or, even better, a telescope will reveal the full glory of the universe.

One really good web site which allows you to see exactly what you can view from your Spanish property (particularly if you are living in rural Spain) is www.stellarium.org – it’s free, easy to use and download and it allows you to enter your own personal location and find exactly what constellations, stars and planets are on view from your property in Spain. You can use the easy tool bar to add overlays of constellations (groups of stars) and individual objects and you are able to move around the night sky in Spain on your screen. And as the earth moves – so the views change!

Probably the easiest to find major feature of the November Spanish night sky is the constellation of Orion the hunter. Orion rises (to be exact it’s the earth that is moving!) in the east and is in its full visible glory through to shortly before first light. To find it: look towards the southern sky after dark – Orion is a large squarish group of stars which dominate the winter sky in Spain.

ORION - THE PICTURE WE SHOULD SEE!

The ancients thought that the group of stars that make up the main pointers of Orion looked like the outline of a hunter. The square representing the shoulders and feet and the centre: the belt and sword. To the right as you look at the constellation is a fainter representation of the hunter’s bow. The top left hand orange star (Betelgeuse) is one of the brightest stars you can see and the light we can view from Spain left is over 650 years old – so the Moors still ruled Spain when it started its travels to earth! It’s a star reaching the end of its life.

The bottom right hand star is Rigel which is white and marginally brighter, with the power of 60000 of our suns and over 700 light years away, meaning the light is nearly 700 years old when it reaches earth.

If you look at the hunter’s belt in Orion the bright object to the east or left is Sirius the Dog Star which is much closer to earth, the light taking only six light years to reach us. Sirius is frequently wrongly thought to be a planet because it is so bright. To the right (or west), during November, the very bright object is the planet Jupiter which is currently the closet to the earth it will be until 2022.  It will be visible from Spain until just before dawn. Try to see it early in the month before the full moon in Spain makes the night sky too bright. Stars, just like our sun are nuclear balls of gas and dust  and emit light and heat – whereas planets reflect light from the stars.

If you keep travelling west and upwards to the right along the hunter’s belt you will find a cluster of stars – Pleiades or the seven sisters. When viewed through binoculars, you quickly realise there are a lot more than seven stars!

THE NIGHT SKY IN SPAIN IN RURAL AREAS CAN REVEAL THE STARS AND MOON SUPERBLY

The full moon in Spain in November is on the 10th, the new moon on the 25th and there will (with luck) and good visibility be a shower of shooting stars on the 17/18^th!  I will give you more details of that wonderful event later in the month together with further information on the fascinating things that you can see in the Spanish night sky as we head towards Christmas…

Iain Henderson – Culture Spain

Iain lives in Spain, was a professional soldier is a businessman and has lived in many different parts of the world.  His lovely villa is available for rent during the summer months.