November always has many things going for stargazing fans, and this year we have great added attractions, a near total lunar eclipse as well as excellent planet watching!

The lunar eclipse begins just after midnight on Nov. 19.

The full moon early that morning will enter Earth’s shadow and won’t completely emerge from it until just after 6 a.m. The peak of the eclipse will be just after 3 a.m.

Technically it’s not a total lunar eclipse, but almost. All but a tiny slice of the moon’s disk will fully enter the Earth’s umbra shadow. Much of the moon will sport varying shades of red, which is why lunar eclipses have become popularly known as Blood Moons. I’ll have more about the eclipse in next week’s Starwatch column.

The bright planet Venus will continue its stint as our Butler “evening star,” popping out of the early evening twilight in the low southwest sky. This Sunday the new crescent moon will be in a tight celestial hug with Venus. The very thin moon will be parked just to the lower right of Venus. Unfortunately, as brilliant as Venus is, it’s not much of a telescope target because of its complete and thick cloud cover. Because Venus orbits around the sun inside Earth’s orbit, it goes through phases, just like our moon. This month Venus will be crescent-shaped.

A little higher up in the evening southern sky are Jupiter and Saturn, hanging close together. Jupiter is the brighter of the two, with Saturn a little to the lower right. This coming Wednesday evening the first quarter moon will be tight and bright with Saturn, just below and to the left of the ringed planet. On Thursday evening, the moon will sit just to the lower left of Jupiter.

Through even a small telescope, you can easily resolve Saturn’s beautiful ring system, and you can catch the nightly show put on by Jupiter’s four moons. They appear like little stars on either side of Jupiter’s disk and continually change their positions as they orbit the enormous planet.

Even though it’s still autumn, some of the early bright constellations of winter are already on the rise on the November celestial stage.

First off, you can’t help but see a beautiful little star cluster shining brightly in the low eastern sky, resembling a tiny dipper. It’s not the Little Dipper. It’s the Pleiades star cluster, the best naked-eye star cluster in the night sky.

Astronomically, the Pleiades are a group of young stars almost 2,400 trillion miles away, born together about 100 million years ago.

In the south-southeastern sky, you can see Pegasus the Winged Horse, one of the prime autumn constellations, with Andromeda the Princess tagging along. Use your Sky Guide app to locate the Andromeda galaxy. While it is our Milky Way galaxy’s next-door neighbor, it’s still well over 2,000,000 light-years away! You can certainly see it with a small telescope, but it’s even possible to see it with the naked eye in super dark skies. It resembles a tiny, faint cloud patch.

Face north, and you’ll see old friends like the Big Dipper; the rear end and tail of Ursa Major, the Big Bear, is very close to the horizon.

In the southern part of the northern hemisphere, parts of Big Dipper lie below the horizon. A little higher in the northern sky hanging upside down is the Little Dipper, otherwise known as Ursa Minor, the Little Bear.

Cassiopeia the Queen, the constellation resembling a giant sideways W, proudly shows off her stuff in the high northeast sky. The W outlines the throne of the Queen, and Cassiopeia is tied up in that throne. She really ticked off Hera, the queen of the Greek gods, by proclaiming that she was even more beautiful than Hera’s godly self. Hera went crazy and angrily tossed Cassiopeia up into the sky, eternally bound to her throne for all to see.

In the western sky, there are still some summer constellations, believe it or not! Among the brighter ones is Cygnus the Swan, Lyra the Harp and Aquila the Eagle. We won’t see them for too much longer. As our Earth orbits the sun, summer stars will gradually set earlier and earlier in the evening.

Enjoy the longer nights of November stargazing!

Mike Lynch is an amateur astronomer and retired broadcast meteorologist for WCCO Radio in Minneapolis/St. Paul. He is the author of “Stars: a Month by Month Tour of the Constellations,” published by Adventure Publications. Contact him at mikewlynch@comcast.net.