Welcome to the University of Texas Skywatchers Report for Monday December 14th through Sunday December 20th.
The moon is new on Monday the 14th and then we’ll have a waxing crescent moon in the western skies after sunset for the rest of the week.
If you remember back to the full moon of November, there was a penumbral lunar eclipse and now the Sun, Moon, and Earth are even more closely aligned so some parts of the Earth saw a total solar eclipse with December’s New Moon. The path of totality for this eclipse didn’t cross much land, but lucky residents of southern Chile and Argentina got to see it and a large portion of South America saw a partial eclipse where the weather cooperated.
Jupiter and Saturn continue to move closer to one another in our southwestern skies shortly after sunset as they head towards their closest approach on December 21st when the two planets will be a tenth of a degree apart. Look for a thin crescent moon below the pair on the 16th and above and to the left of them on the 17th. The pair is setting at 8:00 p.m. at midweek.
Mars is high in the southeast as the sky darkens after sunset and is setting at 2:30 a.m. at midweek.
Venus is rising at 5:30 a.m., just under two hours before sunrise.
Mercury is in superior conjunction with the Sun on Saturday when it will pass behind the Sun from the Earth’s point of view and it will move from our morning skies back into our early evening skies.
In space anniversaries this week, Tuesday December 15th marks 55 years since the launch of the Gemini 6 mission with Wally Schirra and Tom Stafford aboard. After entering orbit, they performed a few burns to catch up with the Gemini 7 spacecraft, crewed by Frank Borman and Jim Lovell, who launched two weeks earlier and they performed the first rendezvous of two spacecraft with humans aboard. The two capsules came within about a foot of one another but did not dock.
All public viewing events on UT campus telescopes will be on hold through the Spring 2021 semester. We will update the website outreach.as.utexas.edu with a new schedule when we are able to resume viewing.
While you’re waiting for in-person telescope viewing to resume, you can tune in to McDonald Observatory live streams from west Texas. You can view past events on the McDonald Observatory YouTube channel and you can follow the observatory on Twitter, Facebook and at McDonaldObservatory.org to be notified of future events.
Thank you for calling the University of Texas Skywatchers Report.
