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During camp:
* Saturn
* Mercury will rank next in brilliance, after Sirius.
* 5.8-magnitude Uranus
* Leonid meteor shower is expected as Earth encounters a trail of dust released by Comet Tempel-Tuttle in 1932
* A very thin old crescent Moon rises just over an hour before sunrise.
* Pleiades star cluster will be at opposition. This occurs each year about the same date, when Sun-Earth-Pleiades lie in a nearly straight line in space.
* Both LMC & SMC high in the sky
* Andromeda Galaxy
* Orion high in the sky
Mars enters the morning sky in November. However, it is very close to the horizon, deep in the twilight, and will be very difficult to observe. On November 20th, Mars is a handspan from the crescent Moon and Mercury, but is only just above the eastern horizon half an hour before Sunrise.
On the 19th, the radiant of the Leonid meteor shower is not far from Saturn.
Uranus can still be (just) seen with the naked eye in dark sky sites by people with good eye sight. Uranus is roughly 2/3rd of the way down Aquarius and right next to the faintish star lambda l Aquarii and doesn't move much this month.
The Leonids will have much better rates this year, predictions for the peak rates lie between 35-150 meteors per hour for ZHR. Unfortunately in Australia, the peak occurs before the Leonid radiant rises, and the radiant never rises very far above the horizon (which results in few meteors). None the less, one could expect an average between 1-2 meteors every 3 minutes or so. The best time to observe in Australia is the morning of the 19th between 3 and 4 am (daylight saving time). The Radiant (where the meteors appear to come from) is not far from Saturn, in the Sickle of Leo.
The Milky Way, Orion and the Hyades will be visible, so it will be a quite nice morning, even if fewer than expected meteors turn up. Outside of the showers, you can still see sporadic meteors in dark skies.
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