Welcome to December, the last month of the year, the holiday season, and the winter solstice. December does not have a lot of clear skies, but has plenty to see when the clouds do part!
Dec. 21 marks the winter solstice, when the Sun reaches its lowest point in the sky, and day length reaches its minimum. On the 21st, the Sun will rise at about 7:44 a.m. and set at about 4:24 p.m., for a day length of about 8 hours and 40 minutes. Daylength will begin to slowly increase after the 21st, adding a few seconds each day.
At the start of December, we’ll have a bright, waxing crescent Moon. On Dec. 4, we’ll see full Moon, followed by December’s new Moon on the 19th. On Dec. 3, the bright Moon will move in front of the bright star cluster the Pleiades, starting at about 5 p.m., finishing at about 8 p.m. It may be difficult to view, as the bright Moon may make it hard to see the stars as they disappear and reappear behind the Moon.
On Dec. 8, the Moon will lie above Jupiter, in the eastern evening sky. On the morning of the 14th, the waning crescent Moon will present a nice view, just to the right of the bright star Spica in the constellation Virgo. Another nice view will occur on the evening of Dec. 26, with the waxing crescent Moon lying just above Saturn, low in the southern sky.
The Geminid meteor shower will peak on the night of Dec. 13-14. The Moon should not be a big factor, being low in the morning sky and only about 25% illuminated.
Saturn remains in the evening sky, easily visible, in the south and southwestern evening sky. This month our other gas giant, Jupiter, makes its debut in the evening sky. Look for Jupiter rising in the east by 7:30 p.m. early in the month, and dominating the eastern evening sky. Jupiter will be in the constellation Gemini, with the Gemini twins, Castor and Pollux, above the gas giant. Train a pair of binoculars on Jupiter and see its four largest moons, called the Galilean moons. If you watch them on different nights, you’ll see that they change positions, indicating that they are orbiting Jupiter, as Galileo observed centuries ago.
I don’t usually stray from describing the night sky for these columns, but this month I want to write a few words about the loss of a friend, Steve Stout, long-time director of the Goldendale Observatory in Goldendale. Steve passed away in late October, after I had already submitted my November column. Steve ran the observatory from the time before it became a Washington State Park, through its beginnings as a unique State Park, until his retirement after 32 years running the park. I started volunteering there in 1986, and spent many hours under the stars with him over the years. One thing Steve liked to do was describe his age not in years, but in “lunations” — a lunation being the time for our Moon to orbit the Earth. I calculated that Steve lived for 972.45 lunations. A life well-lived, Steve.
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