What's in the sky tonight?
December 31, 2012
-After the New Year's cheering at midnight is over, step outside into the cold, silent dark. The bright Moon will be shining in the southeast, with Regulus to its left. Due south is Sirius at its greatest height, with Orion to its upper right and the Jupiter-Aldebaran-Pleiades arrangement farther on — tipped differently than we're used to seeing it in the evening. Upper left of Sirius is Procyon.
-Algol should be at its minimum light, magnitude 3.4 instead of its usual 2.1, for a couple hours centered on 11:02 p.m. EST. Algol takes several additional hours to fade and to rebrighten.
Astro Picture of the Day:
December 31, 2012
Source:
What do Saturn's rings look like from the dark side? From Earth, we usually see Saturn's rings from the same side of the ring plane that the Sun illuminates them - one might call this the bright side. Geometrically, in the above picture taken in August by the robot Cassini spacecraft now orbiting Saturn, the Sun is behind the camera but on the other side of the ring plane. Such a vantage point gives a breathtaking views of the most splendid ring system in the Solar System. Strangely, the rings have similarities to a photographic negative of a front view. For example, the dark band in the middle is actually the normally bright B-ring. The ring brightness as recorded from different angles indicates ring thickness and particle density of ring particles. At the top left of the frame is Saturn's moon Tethys, which although harder to find, contains much more mass than the entire ring system.