This night will be magical Mega full moon, shooting stars and a glimpse into the neighboring galaxy

For October 31 - Sun, moon and stars in November - Shooting stars and the biggest full moon of the year

The Andromeda Nebula is a galaxy similar to the Milky Way.

Image: Nasa/epa/dpa

A particularly large full moon, also known as a supermoon, can be seen next to the top of the Quadriga on the Brandenburg Gate when it is slightly cloudy.

Image: Soeren Stache/dpa

A shooting star shines alongside the Milky Way in the sky above Lake Walchensee in Bavaria. Every year, the earth crosses the path of a comet on its orbit around the sun in mid-November and the shooting stars of the Leonids appear in the night sky.

Image: Matthias Balk/dpa 

For October 31 - Sun, moon and stars in November - Shooting stars and the biggest full moon of the year

The Andromeda Nebula is a galaxy similar to the Milky Way.

Image: Nasa/epa/dpa

A particularly large full moon, also known as a supermoon, can be seen next to the top of the Quadriga on the Brandenburg Gate when it is slightly cloudy.

Image: Soeren Stache/dpa

A shooting star shines alongside the Milky Way in the sky above Lake Walchensee in Bavaria. Every year, the earth crosses the path of a comet on its orbit around the sun in mid-November and the shooting stars of the Leonids appear in the night sky.

Image: Matthias Balk/dpa 

November awaits with the largest full moon of the year and a stream of shooting stars. Under good conditions, observers can even catch a glimpse of our neighboring galaxy Andromeda.

In November, the gas giant Jupiter in Gemini dominates the night sky with its brilliance. It is clearly visible a little to the south of the two main stars in Gemini, the pair of brothers Castor and Pollux.

And Saturn can be seen in the east in the early evening sky. The ringed planet is in Aquarius. It gradually recedes from the second half of the night. Saturn's ring appears extremely narrow in the telescope. This is because the inclination of the ring to the Earth is currently very low and you are looking almost exactly at the edge of the ring.

Mars has long since withdrawn from the evening sky and remains invisible in the daytime sky. Venus is making its farewell appearance in the morning sky. It is heading ever more southerly in the zodiac. Right at the beginning of the month, it passes by Spica, the main star of Virgo. The rising of Venus is delayed from day to day. At the end of November, Venus rises just under an hour before the sun.

Mercury appears in the morning sky under favorable viewing conditions at the end of November. It reaches its greatest western angular distance from the sun on the 30th at 18 degrees. It therefore rises before it. On this day, it rises at 6:12 am. Half an hour later, it has risen above the layers of haze near the horizon to such an extent that it becomes visible. But by 7:20 a.m., the smallest planet in our solar system is already fading in the increasing morning light.

Full moon near the Earth leads to extreme tides

The full moon is reached at 14:19 on November 5, with the Earth's satellite in the constellation of Aries. On the same night, the moon comes within 356,833 kilometers of the Earth. This makes it the largest full moon of 2025. The coincidence of the full moon and its proximity to the Earth leads to extreme tides with spring tides.

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New moon occurs on the 20th at 7:47 am. On the same day, the moon reaches its greatest distance from us at 406,691 kilometers.

Meteoroids on the opposite course to the Earth's orbit

The shooting stars of the Leonids stream shine from November 13 to 30. As their name suggests, the meteors appear to come from the constellation Leo. The peak of Leonid activity this year can be expected on the morning of the 17th.

However, only 10 to 15 Leonids can be expected per hour this time. The best time to observe the Leonids is during the second half of the night.

The meteoroids are moving in the opposite direction to the Earth's orbit, which is why frontal collisions occur. The relative speed is therefore 70 kilometers per second, or 252,000 kilometers per hour. This distance corresponds to two thirds of the distance from the Earth to the Moon.

The Leonids are ejected pieces of the comet 55P/Tempel-Tuttle. In some years they were particularly conspicuous, with several hundred shooting stars per hour. This is the case on average every 33 years when the Earth collides with the center of the Leonid debris cloud.

The winter constellations appear in the evening

In the early evening shortly after dusk, the summer triangle can still be seen in the western sky. It is made up of the stars Vega in Lyra, Deneb in Swan and Atair in Eagle. However, the bright Arcturus in Bootes has already set.

At the standard observation time around 10 o'clock in the evening, the first winter constellations have already appeared in the east and south-east, namely Orion, Taurus and Gemini. High in the east shines the yellow Chapel, the main star in the constellation of Carthusian. Directly above our heads, in the zenith, we can see the conspicuous figure of the celestial W, Queen Cassiopeia. The central point of the celestial W points approximately to Polaris, which points us in a northerly direction. The Big Dipper, on the other hand, is low in the north-eastern sky.

A large square of stars can be seen high in the south. It forms the central part of Pegasus, the leading constellation of the autumn sky. It is therefore also known as the autumnal quadrilateral. The autumnal quadrilateral is adjoined in a north-easterly direction by the Andromeda chain of stars.

Just below it is Perseus, the savior of Princess Andromeda. South of Andromeda is the small but striking constellation of Aries. Between Andromeda and Aries is the tiny constellation of the Triangle. In the south, the faint and extended constellations of Pisces and Whale can be seen in clear skies, with good visibility and far from terrestrial light sources.

Neighbouring galaxy Andromeda visible with good visibility

Under extremely good visibility conditions, an elongated, faint patch of light can be seen in the constellation Andromeda. A hundred years ago, the Andromeda Nebula was believed to be a gas cloud in our Milky Way.

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But with the two-and-a-half-meter reflector telescope at the Mt. Wilson Observatory near Los Angeles, which went into operation in the autumn of 1917, Edwin Powell Hubble and his colleague Milton Humason were able to prove that the Andromeda Nebula is a star system far outside our Milky Way. Between 1924 and 1928, using the Hooker telescope - named after its sponsor, the industrialist John D. Hooker - they succeeded in resolving the edges of the Andromeda Nebula into individual points of light.

This opened the door to the depths of the universe. Many of the foggy structures in the firmament are huge Milky Way systems with hundreds of billions of suns. They often have a spiral shape. Despite a distance of almost 2.5 million light years, the Andromeda galaxy is still our neighboring Milky Way system.

The length of the day is shortened by well over an hour

The other galaxies, as the Milky Way systems are also called, are much further away. Hubble also discovered that the galaxies are moving away from us, and the further away they are, the faster. In short, the universe is expanding and, as we have recently discovered, even at an accelerated rate.

The sun sinks lower and lower in the zodiac. It moves through the constellation Libra and moves into the constellation Scorpio on November 23, where it will remain for just one week. One day earlier, on the 22nd, it enters the zodiac sign of Sagittarius. At midnight on the 30th, it leaves the constellation of Scorpio again and crosses the border into the constellation of the Serpent Bearer. The length of the day is shortened by one hour and twenty minutes at 50 degrees north and the noon altitude decreases by seven degrees.