Photo of the Week. The waning gibbous Moon shows its
circular, dark, lava-filled impact basins, the craters along the
terminator (the day-night division) casting shadows that make them
very visible. Mare Imbrium is to the upper left. The "rays"
centered on the young crater Tycho (toward the bottom) are splash
marks caused by rocks ejected from the impact that made it.
Astronomy news for the two-week period starting Friday, January
4, 2008.
Welcome to the New Year. The next Skylights will appear on Friday,
January 18.
We start Skylights' New Year with the Moon in the waning crescent phase, as it heads towards
new on Tuesday, January 8, about the time of sunrise in North
America. Watch as the slimming crescent plows down through Scorpius the mornings of Friday the
4th and Saturday the 5th. The morning of the 4th it will be to the
right of Venus
with Scorpius's head between the two, while on the 5th it will
be close to Antares and below the
bright planet. You can still follow it until the last glimpse on
the morning of Monday the 7th. On the other side of the sky, the
Moon will first appear as a thin waxing
crescent the evening of Wednesday the 9th, the crescent growing
until the Moon passes first quarter on
Tuesday the 15th, after which it waxes in
the gibbous. On Thursday the 10th, it passes just south of Neptune,
while two days later goes to the north of Uranus.
Then look the night of Thursday the 17th to see the Moon just shy of the
Pleaides in
Taurus.
The morning's show still belongs to Venus, which in the middle of
our fortnight rises shortly before 5 AM. On Sunday the 6th, the
bright planet passes six degrees to the north of Antares, the
closeness making the color contrast quite noticeable. The evening,
on the other hand, belongs to Mars, which,
in
retrograde (backward, or western) motion, has now entered
northeastern Taurus. Crossing
the meridian high to the south (the
planet 3.5 degrees north of the ecliptic) around 10:30 PM, it
will have moved well into the west by the time Venus rises, the
Earth now pretty much in between the two. In the middle is good
old Saturn,
which (in Leo) comes up above the
eastern horizon around 9 PM and crosses the meridian about 3
AM.
That leaves Mercury, which is
beginning to make a small show in the southeast in twilight, and
Jupiter, which does not rise until about midway through
morning's dawn. Mercury is a particularly "hot topic," as Mercury Messenger will make
its first rendezvous with the little planet on January 14. With
Venus sinking lower each morning and Jupiter rising higher, the two
are heading for a fine conjunction the morning of February
1.
With Cassiopeia starting to ride
down the northwestern skies, look for Ursa Major's Big
Dipper beginning to climb in the northeast. By the time of
Venus's rising, the famed figure is nearly overhead for those in
middle latitudes.
