Sky Diary November 2025

Close approaches, Supermoon, Leonid meteors, Comets, Saturn and Jupiter

by Mark Phillips
Data from Dominic Ford’s in-the-sky.org and other sources

This month we have a supermoon (see what that means later), still some interesting comets, some close encounters with the Moon, Saturn is an evening object with Jupiter rising later at night, and the Leonid meteor shower peaks.

Saturn is always an impressive object, even with its rings almost closed as they are now, but it doesn’t get very high as seen from Edinburgh so not one of its best years. Jupiter however, is getting easier to see as it now rises well before midnight. At mag. -2.4 and reaching an altitude of abut 55° it’s going to become a more accessible and interesting evening target over the next few months as it approaches opposition in Jan 2026.

The Leonids are not normally the most spectacular of meteor showers apart from every 33 years or so when they can produce storms. A storm isn’t expected this year (next in 2033-34) but you never know with meteor showers; they can and do suprise us!

There’s a lot of hype about supermoons but what are they? A supermoon occurs when we get a full Moon when the Moon is at perigee – the closest point in its orbit to Earth. So the Moon can appear a little bigger. But when seen in the sky it’s rarely that obvious unless close to the horizon. Here’s a graphic from in-the-sky.org showing just how much bigger it will appear this month:

Highlights:

• 2 Nov – Close approach of the 89% Moon and Saturn, just over 3° apart
• 5 Nov – Full Moon, supermoon, known as the “Hunter’s Moon”
• 6 Nov – Close approach of the 96% Moon and the Pleiades, less than 1° apart
• 10 Nov – Close approach of the 64% waning gibbous Moon and Jupiter, 3°50′ apart. Jupiter will be mag. -2.4
• 17 Nov – peak of the Leonid meteor shower, active between 6 – 30 Nov. Possibly 10 – 15 per hour just before dawn.
• Observe Saturn in the evening, 29° altitude
• Observe Jupiter late night, early morning, maximum 55° altitude around 04:00 GMT
• 20 Nov – New Moon
• Comet C/2025 A5 (Lemmon) getting too low now
• Comet C/2025 R2 (Swan) fading but getting higher in the sky
• Comet C/2024 E1 (Wierzchos) brightnening to peak in Jan 2026 but getting lower

Comets

We’ve been very lucky to have several bright and interesting comets around recently. C/2025 A6 (Lemmon) has been putting on an impressive display but is getting too low for us to see in Edinburgh now. Finder chart

C/2025 R2 (SWAN) was good in October but is now fading fast. It is getting higher and easier to observe in the SW in the evenings though. Finder chart

We’ve been following C/2024 E1 (Wierzchos) for some time and it is getting brighter, probably peaking about mag. 7 in January 2026. It will be visible at the start of the month but as the month progresses it will be getting too low for us and will soon disappear from our skies. Finder chart

29P/Schwassmann-Wachmann is beginning its next apparition just before dawn, currently still faint round about mag 17. This is a comet that we follow along with the BAA Mission 29P campaign. It is an interesting comet undergoing many outbursts and always worth watching. See the video of Richard Miles’ talk at one of our recent meetings.