Bob Moler's Ephemeris Blog

Tuesday, December 7th.  The sun will rise at 8:05.  It’ll be up for 8 hours and 56 minutes, setting at 5:02.   The moon, 2 days past new, will set at 7:00 this evening.

The bright orange star Aldebaran is the most westerly bright star of winter Aldebaran appears at the upper left tip of a letter V group of stars that is the face of the bull.  It appears above the constellation of Orion low in the east.  Aldebaran isn’t actually part of the group, called the Hyades star cluster.  The cluster is about 151 light years away, while Aldebaran is 65.   The Hyades is the closest star cluster to us, and allows astronomers to measure the distance of even more distant star clusters.  It has been determined to be moving in space relative to the sun to the northeast in our sky, and away from us.  It will lose its V shape in time.  It shares this motion with another star cluster the Praecepe cluster in Cancer which is just rising at 9 p.m.

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