A full moon on Sunday will dominate the sky through the weekend. This is a moon that is hard to ignore. Only a December full moon rises higher in our night sky. The full moon is in the zodiacal constellation Taurus, not far from the star cluster Pleiades.

We call this November full moon the Bay Scallop Moon because this is our bay scallop season. Up north they call it the Beaver Moon, but that makes no sense on the Vineyard. We have no beavers.

The gibbous moon moves along side the bright planet Jupiter by the end of the coming week.

Planets

Venus, the brightest planet in our western sky, is getting both closer and lower in the sky. Astronomers estimate the planet is only 47 million miles away; that is about half the distance between the Earth and the sun. By the end of November it will be 42 million miles away. By the end of December it will only be 26 million miles away.

Watch Venus as it brightens and continues to hover over our western sky. But be prepared for Venus to slip from view in our evening sky in the new year.

Jupiter is the easiest planet to see at night. The planet appears low in the eastern sky around 10 p.m. and it dominates the evening sky from then on. You can’t miss seeing this planet if you are outside around 11 p.m. when the planet is high in the east. Jupiter is in the zodiacal constellation Gemini.