SKYGUIDE Nov & Dec 2025

The two best showers of the season are both set to peak under nearly perfect, dark-sky conditions.

• Leonids (Peak: Nov 17-18): This one is right around the corner! It's peaking in just a couple of days. The good news is that the Moon is a thin, waning crescent that won't rise until the pre-dawn hours (around 5:30 AM). This leaves the prime viewing time (after midnight, when the radiant in Leo is high) perfectly dark. Expect up to 15 meteors per hour.

• Geminids (Peak: Dec 13-14): This is the main event. The Geminids are one of the most reliable and active showers of the year, capable of producing up to 150 meteors per hour. And the sky conditions are a gift! The peak falls just a few days before the New Moon. The slim waning crescent moon won't rise until after 2:00 AM, meaning it will not interfere at all with the best viewing hours.

Here’s where it gets really exciting. On the exact same night as the Geminid meteor shower peak (December 13-14), we have a prime DWARF target cutting through the same constellation!

Our very own provided event guide highlights this awesome opportunity: the asteroid 10 Hygiea will glide right past the M35 (Shoe-Buckle Cluster). a long exposure to capture the asteroid and cluster may also include a hidden bonus, a meteor streak!

• The Targets: Hygiea, the 4th largest asteroid, will be glowing around magnitude +10.3. It will pass the brilliant M35 open cluster (mag +5.3).

• DWARF-Ready: This is a perfect shot for our scopes. The DWARF’s field of view will beautifully frame M35, the fainter companion cluster NGC 2158, and the asteroid all in one frame.

• The Mission: The goal is to use a UV/IR Cut (Astro) filter and take a long imaging run. Over a few hours, we can create a stunning time-lapse showing the asteroid’s motion against the star cluster. And with the Geminids peaking, you might even catch a bright meteor streaking through your shot!

  • PRO TIP: Be sure to flip through all your .fits files on your dwarf with a fits viewer or SIRIL to see if you caught a meteor, as the internal stacking algorithm may remove this gem from the stack.

• Sky Conditions: As confirmed, the Moon is a late-rising crescent, leaving our prime imaging window from the evening until 2:00 AM completely dark. This is our must-image event for the end of the year!

This is a fantastic comet season for DWARF-wranglers. We have two returning active comets to hunt, as the star of the season C/2025 A6 (Lemmon) passes the sun and reappears in the sky only in late December.

• The Interstellar Visitor: 3I/ATLAS (C/2025 N1)

  • This isn’t a normal comet; it’s the third confirmed interstellar object ever detected—a visitor from another star system!

  • It passed perihelion (closest to the Sun) on October 30, 2025, and after being hidden in the Sun’s glare, it has re-emerged into our pre-dawn sky.

  • Magnitude: As of mid-November 2025, it’s glowing around magnitude 9.8. This is a perfect DWARF target.

  • The Mission: This is a high-priority scientific target. Recent images (Nov 8-9) show it has a complex structure with multiple jets, a long tail, and even anti-tail jets. Capturing this evolving structure is a fantastic challenge. It will be closest to Earth on December 19, making the next few weeks prime imaging time.

• The Fragmenting Comet: C/2025 K1 (ATLAS)

  • This comet is also putting on a great show, as it passed the sun early in November the sun’s heat has broken the comet's core into at least two fragments, can you image these pieces with your Dwarf?

  • Magnitude: Recent observations (as of Nov 14) place it at magnitude 9.3—even brighter than the predicted 10.6.

  • The Mission: The most exciting feature here is that the comet has reportedly broken into at least two fragments (A+B). Resolving these two separate pieces as they drift apart is a true test of our DWARF scopes and processing skills. It’s currently high in the sky in Ursa Major.

Here are the other key targets and the best times to hunt for deep-sky objects.

Key Planetary & Moon Events

• Uranus at Opposition (Nov 21): Prime time for the “sideways planet”! It will be at its brightest (mag 5.6) and visible all night long, making it an easy target for the DWARF.

• Moon & Pleiades (Dec 4): The Full Moon on this night is also a “Supermoon”. It will pass very close to the Pleiades (M45) star cluster. This isn’t a deep-sky shot, but a fascinating (and challenging) brightness-test to capture the brilliant moon and the bright cluster in the same frame in your Dwarfs wide-field camera.

• Saturn & Jupiter: Both gas giants are well-placed. Saturn is visible in the evening sky, and Jupiter rises later in the evening, riding high overhead by dawn. Both are perfect for capturing the planets and their moons.

To hunt for faint fuzzies, we need to avoid the Full Moons (Nov 5 and Dec 4).

• Window 1: Around November 20 (New Moon).

• Window 2: Around December 20 (New Moon).

This gives us a fantastic dark-sky window right after our big Dec 13/14 event to process our data and hunt for more winter targets.

As the constellation Orion climbs high in the sky after midnight, our prime deep-sky targets for these dark windows come into view. This is the perfect time to point our DWARFs at the treasures you’ve captured in our guide’s cover image: the vast stellar nursery of The Great Orion Nebula (M42) and the nearby Running Man Nebula. Just above it, the iconic duo of the Horsehead Nebula and the Flame Nebula near the star Alnitak will be a fantastic challenge. For a brighter, more subtle target, the glowing haze of M78 is a beautiful reflection nebula, and dedicated imagers can even attempt to capture the faint, sweeping arc of Barnard’s Loop surrounding the entire complex.