Glad you're enjoying the thread foilman! Expect a new feature coming up soon..
What's in the sky tonight?
December 8, 2012
-Since Jupiter is just past opposition, the asteroids Ceres and Vesta in Jupiter's vicinity are near their oppositions too. Vesta's opposition is tonight. It's magnitude 6.4, and Ceres is 6.9. Spot them in binoculars this month using the page under the Upcoming Events Tab. They're near the horns of Taurus.
-Algol in Perseus, the prototype eclipsing binary star, should be in one of its periodic dimmings, magnitude 3.4 instead of its usual 2.1, for a couple hours centered on 12:29 a.m. Sunday morning EST; 9:29 p.m. Saturday evening PST. Algol takes several additional hours to fade and to rebrighten.
-Jupiter's moon Io reappears out of eclipse from Jupiter's shadow at 11:49 p.m. EST; 8:49 p.m. PST.
-For all of Jupiter's satellite events, as well as all of the Great Red Spot's transit times, Sky & Telescope has released this Jupiter'sMoons app.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/jupi...577009038?mt=8
-During dawn Sunday morning the waning crescent Moon hangs close to Spica, as shown at right.
-At dawn, watch the waning crescent Moon step down past Spica, Saturn, Venus and Mercury from one morning to the next. As always, this scene is drawn for the middle of North America. European observers: move each Moon symbol a quarter of the way toward the one for the previous date. For clarity, the Moon is shown three times actual size.
Astro Picture of the Day:
December 8, 2012
Source:
This remarkably complete view of Earth at night is a composite of cloud-free, nighttime images. The images were collected during April and October 2012 by the Suomi-NPP satellite from polar orbit about 824 kilometers (512 miles) above the surface using its Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS). VIIRS offers greatly improved resolution and sensitivity compared to past global nightlight detecting instrumentation on DMSP satellites. It also has advantages compared to cameras on the International Space Station. While the space station passes over the same point on Earth every two or three days, Suomi-NPP passes over the same point twice a day at about 1:30am and 1:30pm local time. Easy to recognize here, city lights identify major population centers, tracking the effects of human activity and influence across the globe. That makes nighttime images of our fair planet among the most interesting and important views from space.