Skylights featured five times on Earth Science
Picture of the Day: 1
, 2
, 3
, 4
, 5
Photo of the Week. A piece of the famed Allende
meteorite shows its mystrious round "chondrules" that harken back
to the beginning of the Solar System.
Astronomy news for the week starting Friday, December 14, 2001.
The week begins with the new Moon and throughout most of North
America and Hawaii a partial eclipse of the Sun. The Moon will
then quickly wax through its crescent phase, becoming readily
visible the night of Sunday December 16th in western evening
twilight.
Unlike last June's wonderful total eclipse, this on is "annular,"
that is, the Moon is a bit too far away to cover the Sun fully, the
result a ring of sunlight surrounding the new Moon. The path of
annularity goes across the Pacific Ocean through Central America.
Northerners will see a partial bite taken out of the Sun the
afternoon of Friday the 14th, the time depending on location. On
the east coast, the eclipse takes place just before and around
sunset, while west-coasters will see it in the early afternoon, and
in the very far west, Hawaiians will see it in the morning. The
amount of coverage varies from a tiny bite in the Pacific Northwest
to 60 percent in the far southeastern US to 84 percent in Hawaii.
Be careful NOT to look directly at the Sun! Only professionally-
made proper filters or projection should be used to view the event.
Simply punch a hole in a piece of paper or cardboard and let the
sunlight fall on some surface, and you will see a fine solar image
(do NOT look THROUGH the hole!).
After the crescent Moon clears the Sun, it will pass Mars around
noon on Thursday the 20th. The night of Wednesday the 19th thus
sees the Moon to the west of the red planet, the night of the 20th
to the east. Earlier in the week, Saturn, retrograding
westerly in Taurus, passes four
degrees to the north of Aldebaran on Monday the 17th, making the
color contrast between sunlit planet and the rather cool star
rather obvious.
Sunlight of course heats and illuminates Earth. When the Sun is
high we have a warm season, when low a cold one. At 1:21 PM
Central Time (2:21 EST, 11:21 AM PST), the northern axis of the
Earth leans directly away from the Sun, the Sun crosses the winter
solstice in Sagittarius, winter
begins in the northern hemisphere, and summer in the southern.
Northerners will see the Sun as far south and as low in the sky at
noon as it can get. The Sun will then gradually creep northward,
but at first so slowly that the days will continue to chill as
winter takes its firm grip.
With the Sun in Sagittarius, Gemini, which holds the summer solstice (and for now, Jupiter),
rides high in the sky at midnight, while the autumn constellations,
epitomized for northerners by
Cassiopeia, Cepheus,
and the rest in the Andromeda myth begin slip away to the west.
