Planets and Moon put on a Show in the Sky this Week 12
Kathy Miles writes "By late evening, the bright stars of the Great Winter Circle are in the night sky, containing nine of the twenty-five brightest stars in our skies! The Moon and planets are putting on their own show. Saturn and Jupiter are up mo st of the night while the Moon, Mars and Venus put on a predawn performance, mixing it up within a few degrees of each other."
Interesting. (Score:4, Funny)
Re: Interesting. (Score:2, Funny)
> According to my calculations, all that means I am going to meet a tall, dark stranger tomorrow and then go on a long journey.
Hope his name isn't Charon.
Jack Horkheimer (Score:5, Informative)
Horkheimer: Greetings greetings, fellow star gazers. And if you want to begin December a very special way then mark December 1st as the day you absolutely must go outside before sunrise to see an exquisite cosmic triangle performed courtesy of the three closest celestial bodies. Let me show you. O.K., if we could go out into space and take a closer look at our three closest cosmic neighbors, do you know what they'd be? Well I'm sure all of you have guessed the first one. Our closest neighbor is the Moon. Which on average is about 250,000 miles away. And although it's the smallest of our closest neighbors, only 2,000 miles wide, it looks bigger because it's the closest. Our next closest neighbor Venus is the second brightest object in the night sky and on December 1st it will be 35 million miles away. And with a diameter of 8,000 miles it is 4 times as wide as the Moon and is almost the same size as our planet Earth which has earned it the title "twin sister" planet, although there the similarity ends. The farthest and least bright of our 3 closest neighbors is twice the size of our Moon but only 1/2 as wide as Venus, 4,000 mile wide Mars which on December 1st will be 212 million miles away. And although rather dim at the present it will become one of the brightest objects in the sky next August when it will be as close to us as Venus is now. And just coincidentally these three will form an exquisite visual triangle which the Old Farmer's Almanac describes as "awesome", this Sunday morning just before sunrise. Let's get a preview!
O.K., we've got our skies set up for this Friday just before dawn facing east where you will see an exquisite 24 day old crescent Moon hovering above Mars and Venus and the brightest star of Virgo, Spica. But if you go out Saturday at exactly the same time, that same Moon will be 25 days old and even skinnier and even closer visually to our other two cosmic neighbors. But the big event is, ta da!, Sunday December 1st when just before dawn you will see a 26 day old absolutely exquisite crescent Moon complete with earthshine which will look like a dark full Moon nestled inside the Moon's bright crescent, parked right alongside Venus and Mars in a near perfect triangle only 2 degrees on each side.
Now in order to give you some idea of the relative distances of these objects on December 1st remember that light travels 186,000 miles per second, which means that when you look at the Moon which will be 225,000 miles away on December 1st you will see it not as it exists right now but as it existed 1 1/4 seconds ago. When you look at Venus, which will be 35 1/2 million miles away on December 1st you will be seeing it not as it exists now but as it existed 3 minutes, and Mars which this Sunday will be 212 million miles away you will see as it exists not right now but as it existed 19 minutes ago. Wow! Think of it, an exquisite cosmic triangle of our 3 closest cosmic neighbors, all apparently in a tight triangle, but all at such incredible distances both from us and each other that we see each one as it existed some time ago in the recent past. Wow! I can hardly wait. Happy December 1st and Keep Looking Up!
Re:Jack Horkheimer (Score:1)
I just fired up KStars, set the date/time to 2002-12-01 05:00:00 and location to Los Angeles. Looks like it's going to be one helluva show.
Unfortunately, I'm going to miss this. I'm in Tokyo, and by the time the moonrise hits here, the alignment is way gone. Damn.
trane
I can't Belive no one posted this (Score:1)