Bob Moler's Ephemeris Blog

Thursday, December 2nd.  The sun will rise at 8:00.  It’ll be up for 9 hours and 3 minutes, setting at 5:03.   The moon, 3 days before new, will rise at 5:47 tomorrow morning.

The constellation Auriga the charioteer is half way up the sky in the east at 9 p.m.  It is a pentagon of stars, with the brilliant star Capella at one of its corners.  Capella represents a she goat he’s carrying.  A narrow triangle of stars nearby Capella is her kids.  The Kids is an informal constellation or asterism.  Within and near that pentagon, binoculars and telescopes will find several star clusters, groups of hundreds of stars born in the clump we still see them in.  These star clusters will appear as fuzzy spots in binoculars.  One called M38 is near the center of the pentagon.  Another, M36 is to the east of it. Still another star cluster, M37, is farther east, just outside the pentagon.  The M designations come from Charles Messier who 2 centuries ago ran into them while looking for comets.

* Times are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan.  They may be different for your location.