Welcome to the University of Texas Skywatchers Report for Monday November 25 through Sunday December 1.
The moon is new late on the night of Saturday November 30, so we’ll have a waning crescent moon in our pre-dawn skies all of this week.
Mercury is sinking back towards the sun and its next solar conjunction and is setting at 6:25 p.m. at midweek, still almost an hour after sunset.
Venus continues to shine brightly in the southwest in the early evening hours and is setting at 8:30 p.m. Venus is still moving away from the sun after its last conjunction so it will appear a little higher each evening at sunset for the rest of the year.
Saturn is high in the south at sunset and is setting at 12:40 a.m.
Jupiter is now just over a week away from opposition and is rising at 6:05 p.m. at midweek, just 35 minutes after sunset.
Mars is rising at 9:35 p.m. and has grown to -0.4 magnitude in brightness and 11 and a half arcseconds in size as it heads towards closest approach to Earth in early 2025.
In space anniversaries this week, Thursday November 28 marks 60 years since the launch of the Mariner 4 spacecraft, which would become the first mission to successfully fly past the planet Mars. After an 8 month cruise phase, Mariner 4 made its closest approach to Mars in July 1965 and returned the first close-up images of the Martian surface over the next several months due to the low data transmission rate. Contact with the spacecraft was eventually terminated in December 1967 and the spacecraft remains in a heliocentric orbit.
There will be no viewing on UT campus telescopes this week over fall break and the Thanksgiving holiday.
Next week will be the final week of public viewing on the UT campus telescopes for 2024. Spring semester viewing will start in the second half of January 2025.
Thank you for calling the University of Texas Skywatchers Report.
