IF you look high overhead on November evenings at around 9pm you should easily find one of the most recognisable star patterns in the sky: the famous ‘W’ of Cassiopeia, a star pattern which rivals Orion and the Plough.

Cassiopeia lies on the opposite side of the North Star to the Plough, so when Cassiopeia is seen high up in the sky, the Plough will correspondingly be seen at its lowest point. Cassiopeia and the Plough are known as ‘circumpolar’ groups of stars, because seen from Britain they never set – they are visible in the sky throughout the year.

In 1603, German astronomer Johann Bayer introduced a new system for identifying stars in his 'Uranometria' star atlas. He used the 24 letters of the Greek alphabet to designate the 24 brightest stars in each constellation. The idea was that the brightest star would be alpha, followed by beta, all the way down to omega, which is the last letter of the Greek alphabet, and which would designate the faintest star that could be identified in this system. However, whether stars have changed in brightness or whether Bayer had a bad day from time to time, his order of brightness doesn't always work out.

The letter ‘W’ of Cassiopeia is formed by five stars. Star names may look strange to speakers of English, because they are in fact Arabic. Beginning at the western end, or the right-hand end, we see the star beta, whose proper Arabic name is 'Caph', which means ‘palm’. Next comes alpha or 'Shedar' which means ‘breast’; gamma, which has no name, marks the middle star; then comes delta whose name is 'Ruchbah', which means ‘knee’ and finally epsilon, which again has no other name and is quite noticeably the faintest of the five stars.

Probably the most interesting of the stars of the ‘W’ of Cassiopeia is gamma, the middle star, which is one of the brightest stars to have no proper name. Gamma is a star that sometimes changes in brightness. Stars that do this are called variable stars.

Gamma Cassiopeia is normally about the same brightness as the other stars of Cassiopeia, apart from the fainter epsilon, but between 1932 and 1942 it became noticeably brighter than the other stars and was even brighter than the North Star. This changed the appearance of Cassiopeia considerably. It is therefore well worth keeping an eye on gamma as it may surprise us again.

The Milky Way passes through Cassiopeia, so if you train your binoculars in that direction you should have fantastic views of star fields in our galaxy.

In mythology, Cassiopeia is the boastful queen who upsets Neptune, the god of the sea, who then sends a monster, the Kraken to attack her land.

The queen is told that the only way to save the land is to have her daughter, Princess Andromeda, chained to a rock so the monster can eat her. With Andromeda chained to a rock everything seems lost, but just at the last moment our hero Perseus, riding the winged horse Pegasus arrives on the scene. Perseus has just killed the Medusa, a creature with hair made of snakes, and so horrible that if you looked at it you would turn to stone. Luckily Perseus still has the head of Medusa with him, so he points it at the monster which then turns to stone. Perseus lands to rescue Andromeda and they marry and live happily ever after. All these characters can be seen in the autumn sky.

In November the star charts reintroduce the familiar brilliant constellation of Orion the Hunter, which is visible once again, although it does not come into full view much before midnight. Also becoming more conspicuous in the east are the Pleiades or Seven Sisters and the bright red star Aldebaran in the constellation of Taurus the Bull. The star that will occupy the overhead point during winter, Capella in the constellation of Auriga the Charioteer, is also becoming more noticeable in the east. On the other hand, the Summer Triangle of stars has now lost its dominance and while Vega and Deneb can still be easily seen in the west, the third member, Altair, is now more difficult to find because it is very low in the west.

The Square of Pegasus still dominates the southern sky, with Andromeda and Perseus also easy to find. This is the last month of the year when it is possible to find Fomalhaut, the most southerly of the bright stars seen from Britain, which can be found by using the two right hand stars of the square of Pegasus and drawing a line downwards.

The Planets in November: With the clocks having now gone back an hour,  our prospects for seeing planets have improved.

As soon as it gets dark look to the south and you will see a bright yellow-looking ‘star’ which is the ringed planet Saturn. We are now entering the weeks when the evening skies will be graced by some of the brightest planets. In the south-east, rising around about 6pm, you will two bright dots. The brighter one, which is white in colour, is the planet Jupiter and the fainter, orangey-coloured one is Mars. Both planets will be in the sky throughout the rest of autumn and into winter.

Venus is very low in the west and can be seen just after sunset. You will need to be quick to see Venus as it will set around forty-five minutes after the Sun. Mercury is still too close to the Sun to be seen this month.

Meteor Showers: Following last month’s Orionid meteor shower, this month we have the unusual shower known as the Leonids, so named because the meteors appear to come from the constellation of Leo the Lion. It varies considerably because the main swarm of meteors are bunched together instead of being spread out all along the orbit. Most years we can expect to see around 20 meteors per hour, but the Leonids produce dramatic displays about every 33 years, the most recent being in 2003 when about 3,000 meteors per hour were observed. In 1966 an incredible 180,000 meteors were seen in an hour! The Leonids are associated with comet Temple-Tuttle. This year on the night of November 17/18 we would probably expect to see the more usual 20 Leonids per hour.

Phases of the Moon for November: First Quarter 9; Full Moon 15; Last Quarter 23; No New Moon this month The full moon this month will be the last of the supermoons of the year. When it rises, because it is slightly closer to us than normal, it will appear larger.

The full moon in November is known as the Frost Moon. November is the month when traditionally the first very cold nights of the year occur and frosts will be seen, heralding the winter months.