During the past year, we have looked at the missions and fate of many early artificial satellites. There are far too many to enumerate. Wikipedia lists 174 launches from 1957 to 2014, and many were failures. Sputnik 1 opened the Space Age when it launched on Oct. 4, 1957. One of the latest is CHUBUSAT-1, a Japanese satellite designed to track space debris, launched on Nov. 6, 2014. In between, satellites have visited all the planets in the solar system, and one recently landed on a comet. The golden age of space probes was the 1970s, when 55 launches were made with landings on Mars among the highlights. During 2015, several questions that have been sent in by email and answered individually will be answered in Maine Skies, as many should prove to be of general interest.
Focus on the planets
Mercury makes an appearance very late in the month in the southwest, setting about 45 minutes after the sun. On New Year’s Eve, you might spot Mercury below Venus in the southwest a half-hour after sunset.
Venus reappears in the evening sky at mid-month low in the southwest, about three-quarters of an hour after sunset. On Dec. 22, Venus is in the southwest with an extremely thin crescent moon to its immediate upper right.
Mars appears in the southwest as darkness falls and sets about three hours later. Mars is so far distant that it will appear as a featureless red dot, even with a telescope. On Christmas Eve, Mars will be directly to the left of the crescent moon about an hour as sunset.
Jupiter rises in the east around 10 p.m., as the month opens and earlier each successive day. It will be the brightest point of light in the night sky. Viewers with telescopes should be able to discern the planet’s belts and zones, possibly the great red spot and the constant dance of its four moons about and in front of the giant planet. On Dec. 12, Jupiter, the bright star Regulus and the moon form a loose triangle high in the southwest before sunrise.
Saturn rises only an hour before the sun in the southeast as December opens but three hours before sunrise at year’s end. On Dec. 19, Saturn is just to the lower left of the crescent moon an hour before sunrise.
Uranus as a blue-green disk and the blue-gray disk of Neptune are high on the southeastern and southern horizons, respectively, as night falls. Go to the Sky & Telescope magazine’s website skypub.com/urnep for help in finding these elusive planets.
December events
1: Sunrise, 6:52 a.m.; sunset, 3:56 p.m.
5: Aldebaran, the “red eye of the bull,” is just below the nearly full moon around 7:00 p.m. on the eastern horizon.
6: Full moon, 7:26 a.m. The full moon of December is known variously as the “cold moon,” the “moon before Yule” or the “long night moon.”
12: Check the southwestern horizon an hour before dawn, where Jupiter, Regulus and the moon form a prominent triangle. The moon is at apogee, or furthest distance from Earth.
13: This is the peak night for the Geminid meteor shower originating from the vicinity of Castor and Pollux in Gemini. The moon is essentially in the last quarter and will pose little problem in spotting the bright, fairly slow-moving meteors that may have a rate of up to 120 per hour.
14: Moon in last quarter, 7:53 a.m.
18: The sun enters Sagittarius on the ecliptic.
19: Look for Saturn just below the moon in the southeast about an hour before dawn.
21: Winter solstice, 6:03 p.m. The sun has reached its southernmost point below the celestial equator and will start the long march back to the northern hemisphere. The sun entered the astrological sign of Capricornus at the solstice. New moon, 8:36 p.m.
22: Venus shines brightly to the lower right of the new moon in the west-southwest after sunset.
24: The moon is at perigee, or closest approach to Earth. See if you can spot the faint reddish dot that is Mars to the left of the moon.
25: Merry Christmas!
28: Moon in first quarter, 1:32 p.m.
31: Sunrise, 7:13 p.m.; sunset, 4:04 p.m.
Send astronomical queries to Clair Wood at cgmewood@aol.com or care of the Bangor Daily News, Features Desk, P.O. Box 1329, Bangor, ME 04402.