Welcome to the second edition of Paul’s Notes, the newsletter of Computer Looking Up (previously Paul Stephen’s Journal). Today we revisit the proximity in the sky of the Moon and Venus, the Moon’s early Crescent days, WordPress vs. Ghost, and the November 19th Lunar Eclipse.
In the Sky, November-December 2021
With the Full Moon having just passed on Lunar Eclipse night, over the next few weeks the early evening sky should be ideally dark as the Moon rises later and later. If your skies are not impacted by light pollution, use this time to find the Andromeda Galaxy. The neighbor to our Milky Way Galaxy that is on a “collision course” with us in a few billion years, covers about six Moon-lengths in the sky, end-to-end, if you are fortunate enough see it. Through binoculars in my suburban skies, I can easily see Andromeda’s galactic center as a gray smudge.
The next Full Moon is on December 18th. So if you can, I recommend enjoying the darker evening skies to view Jupiter, Saturn, Venus, and constellations like Auriga, Pegasus, and Taurus.
The next oppositions of Jupiter and Saturn are a ways off, in August and September 2022, respectively. Opposition is when the Sun, Earth, and a planet all align, in that order, and will display the planet at its brightest as seen from our vantage on Earth. Mars’s next opposition is in December 2022.
See my In the Sky page for my upcoming astronomy trackers.
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