The Sky This Week, 2013 December 17 - 24 The brightest stars light our longest nights

The Moon brightens the overnight hours this week, beaming down from
her perch high among the stars of the Great Winter Circle before
easing southward into the rising stars of spring. Last Quarter will
occur on Christmas Day at 8:48 am Eastern Standard Time. Look for
bright Jupiter five degrees north of the just-past Full Moon on the
night of the 18th. On the late evenings of the 2ist and 22nd Luna
will rise near the bright star Regulus in the constellation of Leo,
the Lion.

The winter solstice falls on the 21st at 12:11 pm EST. This is the
moment when the Sun reaches an ecliptic longitude of 270 degrees,
which also happens to be the time when it reaches its most southerly
declination. At this moment the Sun stands directly over the Tropic
of Capricorn about 500 miles off the west coast of Chile. The day of
the solstice is the shortest for residents of the Northern Hemisphere,
but careful skywatchers may have noticed that the sun is now setting
several minutes later than it did around December 7th. As mentioned a
couple of weeks ago, this is due to the Equation of Time, which
corrects apparent solar time to mean solar time. Sunrise and sunset
times are dictated by this equation and the changing declination of
the Sun. At the solstice the latter effect goes to zero, so the
change in the equation of time is the dominant effect. Thus our
earliest sunset occurred on the 7th, but our latest sunrise won't
happen until January 4th. The duration of daylight on the solstice
will be just 9 hours 26 minutes here in Washington.

The bright Moon washes out much of the splendor of the winter sky
early in the week, but fortunately our longest nights are accompanied
by the year's best display of bright stars. We've mentioned Orion on
many occasions, and on a clear night his distinctive figure shines
through all the stray light the Moon can offer. His three bright
"belt" stars make an effective pointer to the brightest star in the
entire sky. Follow a line through these three stars to the left and
you'll run into the pulsing blue blaze of Sirius, commonly called the
"Dog Star" due to its central location in the constellation of Canis
Major, the Greater Dog. Sirius shines at a magnitude of -1.4 and
achieves its prominence due to its very close distance to our Sun.
Located just 8.6 light-years from the solar system, Sirius is about 25
times as bright as the Sun. In 1844 the German astronomer Friedrich
Bessel detected a small "wobble" in the proper motion of Sirius as it
moved through space and proposed the idea that a massive but unseen
companion was the cause. On January 31, 1861, during the course of
testing a 18.5-inch objective lens, American telescope maker Alvan
Graham Clark finally spotted the elusive companion. Now known as
Sirius B, this object is the prototype of a class of stars known as
"white dwarfs". These stars have exhausted all of their nuclear fuel
and have collapsed to form a strange body with a radius similar to
that of the Earth but with a mass approaching that of the Sun.

That bright object in the western twilight sky that's been attracting
your gaze lately is poised to leave us. Dazzling Venus has begun her
descent toward the Sun and will soon vanish in the bright evening
twilight. As the week opens she is still prominent in the
southwestern sky during the early evening, but by Christmas she will
set nearly 25 minutes earlier. By the end of the year she will be
very difficult to spot. Interestingly, we won't see her return to the
evening sky until Christmas time next year.

Jupiter now rises at around 6:00 pm, which will put him well within
range of backyard telescopes by 8:00. He's now just a couple of weeks
from opposition, when he will be at his closest to Earth and brightest
in our skies. Old Jove will be a great target for any telescopes left
under the tree. After the Moon, Jupiter is probably the most popular
target for new telescope owners, and he rarely disappoints. Look for
his four bright Galilean moons which can be seen in any telescope. If
you have an instrument larger than four inches of aperture look for
the dark parallel cloud belts surrounding the bright equatorial zone.
Subtle details are visible in his turbulent atmosphere in moments of
steady air.

Mars now rises shortly before 1:00 am and is high in the southeast as
morning twilight gathers. Earth is gradually catching up to the red
planet, and we'll pass him in early April of 2014. Right now the
telescopic view reveals a tiny ruddy gibbous disc, but his apparent
size will steadily increase as opposition approaches. By that time he
will have grown to over twice the size he exhibits now.

--
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