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December 24, 2007

Clear skies, finally, to view the starry, starry night

AP Photo/NASA
This image provided by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope shows a close-up of the red planet Mars when it was closest to the Hubble Space Telescope - just 55 million miles (88 million kilometers) away taken with Hubble's Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2. Mars was closest to Earth on Dec. 18, at 11:45 p.m. Universal Time (6:45 p.m. EST). Mars and Earth have a "close encounter" about every 26 months. These periodic encounters are due to the differences in the two planets' orbits.

Cloudy, nasty weather robbed us of a chance to see the Gemenid meteor shower at its peak; Mars at its brightest; and just the all-around crisp, clear skies that are ideal for seeing what’s going on in the winter skies.

Things get better tonight.

Expect clear skies and plenty to see, most notably, Mars is at opposition – directly on the other side of the Earth from the sun. Almost like a full moon -- which occurs when the moon is opposite the sun – Mars should be bright.

Not as bright as the moon, of course, but it will be hard to miss; an unmistakably steady, red light that rises in the east at about 5 p.m. Look for it high in the eastern sky, just above the moon, at about 10 p.m.

Find out exactly what you can see at night, no matter where you are, using this online, interactive star chart. It's super easy and very cool.

Also tonight, Sirius, the brightest star in the sky in the constellation Canis Major, should be particularly showy if you can find it just as it rises, low in the southeast sky just before 9 p.m.

The lower it is, the more it appears to twinkle – the twinkling is caused by the light refracting through disturbances in the atmosphere, and the closer to the horizon a light source is, the more atmosphere it traverses to reach our eye.

Christmas morning, Venus will rise between 5 and 5:30 in the morning in the southeast. In the west, the moon will have made it to the middle of the western sky, and Mars will be slightly below it, setting around sunrise, at 7 a.m.

Still looking for a last minute gift? Everything looks better through binoculars.

-- projo.com staff writer Brandie M. Jefferson

Posted by Brandie Jefferson  at 2:35 PM | Permalink

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