Welcome to the University of Texas Skywatchers Report for Monday December 8th through Sunday December 14th.

The moon is at third quarter on Thursday night, so we’ll have a waning gibbous moon for the first half of the week and a waning crescent moon for the weekend.

Mars is now setting just half an hour after the sun and is lost in the sun’s glare as it nears conjunction.

Saturn is high in the south as the sky darkens after sunset and is setting at 12:50 a.m.

Jupiter is rising at 7:50 p.m. and then is up for the remainder of the night.

In the morning skies, Mercury is rising at 5:40 a.m., still about an hour and a half before the sun, so you may be able to catch it low in the east-southeast before dawn.

Venus is rising at 6:50 a.m., about 30 minutes before sunrise as it also nears conjunction.

The Geminids meteor shower peaks on the night of Saturday the 13th into the morning hours of the 14th and won’t have much interference from moonlight this year. The Geminids get their name because they appear to come from a point in the constellation Gemini the Twins, which is fully above the horizon by 8 p.m. This shower is caused by the Earth passing through the debris left behind in our orbit by the object 3200 Phaethon, which is thought to be an Apollo asteroid, as opposed to a comet, the source of most meteor showers. At the peak, this shower is known to produce over 150 meteors an hour.

In space anniversaries, last Sunday, December 7, marks 30 years since the Galileo orbiter went into orbit around Jupiter and released a probe to learn more about the composition and structure of the giant planet’s atmosphere. The probe transmitted for just over an hour and was eventually crushed by the pressure of Jupiter’s clouds as it continued to descend. The orbiter operated for over 7 years before it was intentionally crashed into Jupiter in September 2003.

Public viewing on UT campus telescopes has finished for the fall 2025 semester. Spring semester viewing will start in the second half of January 2026.

Thank you for calling the University of Texas Skywatchers Report.