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Amateur AstronomyGregg PasterickLatest ArticlesThe "Great Andromeda Nebula", which is no nebula at all but a galaxy like our own Milky Way, drifts across November nights. It is the most distant object we can see with the naked eye; more than two million lights away. It's December. We've made it through another year full of ups and downs and in-betweens and hopefully many, many starry nights. A Hole in the Sun, a Small Bite Out of the Moon, and Monitoring a Minor Meteor Shower It's another eclipse month, with an annular eclipse of the Sun on the 3rd, and a partial eclipse of the Moon on the 17th. Also, there is the possibility, however slight, of unusual activity from a minor meteor shower. September begins where August left off: Jupiter and Venus steal a kiss at dusk, while Spica and the Moon are a couple of Peeping Toms, trying to crash the party. This month's highlights are, as usual for August, planets and Perseids. The planets in question are Venus and Jupiter, which pick up the slack from the gathering of Venus, Mercury, and Saturn earlier in the summer. The Perseids are ... well, the Perseids. The Usual Planetary Metaphors and Meteor Shower Hangovers Well, June's gathering of planets becomes July's metaphor for relationships as Saturn, now smitten with the Sun, disappears into its glare early in the month. And then there's the meteor shower hangover... The big deal of June night skies has to be the gathering of planets late in the month. This month we have a meteor shower; we have an asteroid; we have the planets and the moon. We have some eclipses going on in April: a total-annular eclipse of the sun on the 8th, which is visible across the Pacific Ocean, Panama, Colombia, and Venezuela, and a penumbral eclipse of the moon on the 24th visible from the western half of North America. What? Annular? Penumbral? What happened ... Mercury, Saturn, and Gemini in March... |
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