Minnesota Starwatch for December 2003

Starwatch Newsletter

Minnesota Starwatch is a newsletter describing the night sky in the Midwest.

It is updated monthly, and is produced by the
Department of Astronomy, University of Minnesota
116 Church Street SE, Minneapolis, MN 55455

Minnesota Starwatch for December 2003

Hello, this is Minnesota Starwatch for December 2003. The first week of December begins with the Full Moon. Full Moon occurs the evening of December 8th; aptly enough for Minnesota winters, the full moon of December is often called the Cold Moon or the Long Nights Moon. Several planets are visible in the evening sky in December. The planet Mercury will be in the west after sunset in early December, but scintillating Venus will dominate the western sky and appear higher and brighter after sunset each night. Dec 27th is the birthday of the astronomer Johann Kepler. Kepler's studies of the movement of the planet Mars first revealed that the planets move in elliptical orbits around the sun. This December Mars will still be one of the brightest objects in the sky, glowing redly at magnitude -0.4 throughout the night. However, its apparent size, about 11 arcseconds, will be less than half what it was in August at opposition.

Both the giant planets Jupiter and Saturn have been morning objects earlier this fall, but now rise earlier each evening. By December 1st Jupiter rises after midnight and will reach opposition in March, while Saturn rises in the east before 10pm. Currently the south face of Saturn's rings are at an excellent viewing angle, and are tilted widely open to us. Saturn's large moon, Titan, should also be visible in small telescopes.

On Dec 22 at 07:04 Universal Time, the sun reaches it's maximum southern position known as the Winter Solstice and we experience the shortest day of the year. For Minneapolis its only about 8 hours and 47 minutes from sunrise to sunset! One of the brighter meteor showers of the year, the Geminids, occurs in December. This year the meteor shower peaks after midnight on the night of December 13th/14th. The radiant point of the show occurs in the constellation Gemini near the bright stars Castor and Pollux. This shower tends to have bright meteors, and can attain a maximum hourly rate of 80. Friday night telescope viewing begins at 8:00 p.m.

Minnesota Starwatch is available on-line at http://www.astro.umn.edu

For fun Astronomy Outreach programs'check out our Public Outreach link, or if your interested in how you can help build the new Minnesota Planetarium, please call 612-630-6151 or visit http://www.mplanetarium.org.

Como Planetarium is offering fun family shows about astronomy on a limited basis; please call 651-293-5398 for more info! This has been Minnesota Starwatch, produced by the University of Minnesota Astronomy Department.