This is Ephemeris for Wednesday, November 19th. Today the Sun will be up for 9 hours and 25 minutes, setting at 5:10, and it will rise tomorrow at 7:46. The Moon, 1 day before new, will rise at 8:28 tomorrow morning.
Let’s take our weekly look at the whereabouts of the naked-eye planets. Saturn is the brightest star like object in the southeastern sky as soon as it gets dark. In a telescope Saturn sports a very thin ring, 4/10ths of a degree from being edge on. In 4 days the rings will slowly start to open up. Normally, I’d say that Saturn’s rings are easy to see in a telescope. Currently, the rings appear extremely thin and can be difficult to pick up. Jupiter will rise at 8:58 PM in the east-northeast. By 6:30 AM, it will appear high in the southwest, near the stars of Gemini, with Orion and the other bright stars of winter in the southwest. Venus, which will rise at 6:48 AM will be difficult to spot in the morning twilight.
The astronomical event times given in this blog are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan (Lat 44.7° N, Long 85.7° W; EDT, UT – 4 hours) unless stated otherwise. Times will be different for other locations.
Addendum
Jupiter, in the east, among the rising winter stars and Saturn in the south southwest at 10 PM tonight, November 19, 2025. Created using Stellarium.
Jupiter among the setting bright winter stars, and the just risen Venus in the east southeast at 7:15 AM, about a half hour before sunrise tomorrow morning November 20, 2025. Created using Stellarium.
Telescopic Saturn, Jupiter and Venus (north up) as they would be seen in a small telescope with the same magnification. At 10 PM on the evening of the November 19, 2025, Saturn will be 18.4″ in diameter, but its rings, being nearly edge on, may not be visible, and extend to 42.8″. They are tilted 0.4° from being edge on. At 6:00 AM on the morning of November 20, 2025, Jupiter will be 43.0″ in diameter. Io will disappear in Jupiter’s shadow at 11:20 PM EST, and will reappear at the opposite edge of Jupiter at 2:43 AM. Venus’ apparent diameter will be 10.0″, and be 98.1% illuminated. It’s on the far side of the Sun. The (”) symbol means seconds of arc, or 1/3600th of a degree. Created using Cartes du Ciel (Sky Charts), LibreOffice Draw and GIMP.
The naked-eye planets and the Moon at sunset and sunrise on a single night, starting with sunset on the right on November 19th, 2025. The night ends on the left with sunrise on the 20th. Interestingly, the Moon is not shown, because it will be New overnight. Mercury is shown twice. It will pass inferior conjunction, also overnight. Click or tap on the image to enlarge it. Created using my LookingUp app and GIMP.
This is a low precision ephemeris of the Sun Moon and naked eye planet positions for today and tomorrow, November 19th and 20th, 2025. Some of the columns are self-explanatory, others are not. The transit column is the time that the body crosses the meridian and is due south. Elong, for elongation, is the angle between the Sun and that body. RA is right ascension, which is the object’s east-west position on the celestial sphere in hours and minutes. Dec is declination which is the north-south position of the object on the celestial sphere in degrees and minutes. R is the distance of that object from the Sun in astronomical units. An astronomical unit is about 93 million miles or 150 million kilometers. And Delta is the distance of that object from the Earth, also in astronomical units. I omit the ‘m’ in am and pm for compactness. The data was generated using my LookingUp for DOS app and displayed as a table by my Ephemeris Helper app.
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