Skywatch Line for Friday, December 8, through Sunday, December 10, 2023
This is Dudley Observatory’s Skywatch Line for Friday, December 8, through Sunday, December 10, written by Sam Salem.
On Friday, Sun rises at 7:13am and sets at 4:21pm; Moon rises at 2:29am and sets at 1:42pm.
Before and during dawn Saturday morning, catch the meetup in the eastern sky of Venus and the thin crescent Moon, the two classical goddesses Astarte and Diana, respectively. They’re about 4° apart. Venus, at magnitude –4.2, shines as the bright “Morning Star” in the southeast before and during dawn. It rises above the east horizon about 2 hours before dawn’s first light. Watch for it to come up about three fists at arm’s length lower right of Arcturus, the brightest star in the northern constellation of Boötes, twinkling in the east.
Mercury, fading to –0.2, settles down even lower into the sunset afterglow. Try looking for it just above the southwest horizon about 30 or 40 minutes after sunset using binoculars. The farther south you are, the less low it will be.
Jupiter, at magnitude –2.8 in the constellation of Aries, is that bright white dot dominating the high east to southeast in early evening. It stands highest in the south around 9pm.
Saturn, at magnitude +0.9 in dim constellation of Aquarius, glows yellowish high in the south-southwest just after dark. Fomalhaut, twinkles almost two fists at arm’s length to Saturn’s lower left. Saturn declines toward the southwest as evening progresses and sets by about 10pm.
M31, the Andromeda Galaxy, passes zenith around 7 or 8 pm in the mid-northern latitudes. The exact time depends on how far east or west you live in your time zone. Binoculars will reveal the dim little glow of M31 just off the knee of the Andromeda constellation’s stick figure.
Orion is coming into good view low in the east-southeast in early night. Gemini is coming up to its left. The head stars of the Gemini twins, Castor and Pollux, are at the left end of the Gemini constellation, one over the other, with fainter Castor on top.
The Cassiopeia W hangs very high in the northeast after dark. The bottom star of the W is Epsilon (ε) Cassiopeiae, the faintest. Use this star as the starting point for hunting down the little-known star cluster Collinder 463, sparse, loose, subtle, but visible in large binoculars and wide-field scopes on moonless nights. It’s 8° to Epsilon’s celestial north, the direction toward Polaris, surrounded by a nice quadrilateral of 4th- and 5th-magnitude stars about 3° wide. The curved and narrow cluster is nearly 1° long. Its brightest stars are only 8th and 9th magnitude. Use averted vision to have a better view of those stars.