November 17, 2000
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1. Not much griping about global warming this month. If we're lucky, it will be numbingly cold, allowing for some sparklingly clear nights. Jupiter and Saturn are still showing off in the evening, with Mars taking up a late-night post. Venus hangs around in the west for hours after sunset.
3. The moon is at first quarter phase at 9:55 p.m., but you might want to check its position above the southern horizon at an earlier hour. At about 7 p.m., the moon is situated just below the Great Square of Pegasus, an easy-to-learn figure of stars that is as wide as your outstretched hand. Pegasus has long carried the association of a magical horse, and the Arabic names of the two stars at the bottom of the square reflect this history. The star on the left is named Algenib, denoting the wingtip of the winged horse. Across from Algenib on the lower-right corner is Markab, which means saddle.
4. Although the winter solstice is a couple weeks away, the earliest end of twilight for northern mid-latitudes will occur this evening. Earliest sunset, latest sunrise and the solstice don't exactly coincide due to the small but significant non-circularity of Earth's orbit.
9. If you have a clear view of the east this evening or can stay up until the late evening, you will definitely want to check out the show in the constellation Taurus. Look for the moon (frankly, a little brighter than we might wish), flanked by planets Jupiter and Saturn. The Pleiades star cluster is a bit above this trio, while Taurus' leading star, Aldebaran, is nearer the horizon. Saturn is a little fainter than Aldebaran, a lot fainter than Jupiter.
10. The moon will be full overnight, at 3:03 a.m. tomorrow. What would you see if you looked for the moon at that hour? Compared to its position near Jupiter and Saturn a few nights ago, the moon has clearly moved along to the east. The moon is even to the left of Aldebaran as you face south, with Jupiter and Saturn to the right of this bright star.
12. Remember how starved for planets we were just a few months ago? Not anymore. Even the chilly morning has its headline act as Mars rises in the east a few hours before the sun. At present, Mars is hanging out near the beautifully bright star in Virgo, lovely Spica. These two objects are fairly well matched in brightness, but Mars, as the planet, is less likely to twinkle. Spica is also a blue star, while Mars' color is decidedly ruddy.
17. The moon will turn over its last quarter phase for the month at 6:41 p.m., but you needn't look for the moon until after midnight. In fact, 6 a.m. tomorrow would be a fine time to find the moon above the southern horizon, flanked by Mars and Spica to the lower left, and Regulus, the brilliant star of the constellation Leo, to the upper right.
20.If you've been rising early, you may have noticed the moon's eastward progress towards a conjunction with Mars. They will not be terribly close together this morning, about eight lunar diameters, but the striking combination of the waning crescent moon, reddish Mars and the bright blue star, Spica, makes this a very lovely meeting.
21. Here is one event best observed by sleeping through it. The sun will reach its stand-still point, or solstice, at 5:37 a.m., a couple of hours before it crawls above the horizon for Kansans. As Kansans, we -- of course -- realize that winter's worst is still ahead of us, but it is encouraging to have a tiny bit more sunshine every day from now on.
24. The last decade has brought us images of incomparable beauty, many of them from the Earth-orbiting Hubble space telescope. One of the most beautiful pictures of earth from space was taken on this day in 1968 when the United States' first team of astronauts circumnavigated the moon. It's likely that all of us who saw our precious planet that way will never forget it. Thanks to Apollo 8 astronauts Frank Borman, James Lovell and William Anders for this unforgettable image.
25. Today brings a special holiday treat, a partial eclipse of the sun centered at 11:22 a.m. Conditions for a solar eclipse require that the moon be between the Earth and sun, as it is at every new moon, but more strictly that the moon line up almost exactly along the line joining Earth's and the sun's centers. Today's eclipse will only be partial. Beginning at about 9:40 a.m., the moon will nibble away at the sun's disk until about 40 percent is covered, then retreat by12:30 p.m. As always, it is not safe to use your unprotected eyes to look at the sun. You should use a pinhole to project the image of the sun or find an astronomer with adequate filtering equipment. Astronomy magazines will have complete instructions and safety reminders.
27. One planet we won't be seeing for a while is Mercury, behind the sun just two days ago. Mercury travels so quickly that it will re-emerge as an evening star quite early in the new year. A man who was very familiar with the different motions of the planets was born on this date in 1571, Johann Kepler. Kepler worked in an age of tremendous insight and was the first to supply a general mathematical form to the relationship between a planet's distance from the sun and the length of its orbit around the sun.
29. The moon is a slim waxing crescent to the left of Venus as you scan the southwest before 7 p.m. One of the constellation Capricornus' brightest stars, Deneb Algedi, is nearby. Deneb's name refers to the traditional association of this constellation with a goat and marks the tail of the goat.
31. Depending on how one counts, the 20th century ends tonight at midnight (or ended a year ago at midnight). Who will see the first sunrise of the new millenium? These picky questions can be difficult to answer, but one way to answer might be to ask where the sun will be coming up when the world's Coordinated Universal Time ticks 0:00:00 of Jan. 1, 2001; this moment comes at 6 p.m. New Year's Eve for Kansans. That moment should correspond to sunrise all along a line running across the Burma-Thailand border, through China along the Outer Mongolia border, through Siberia and out to sea. Wherever you are, Happy New Millenium!
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