Bob Moler's Ephemeris Blog

New Years Eve, Friday, December 31st.  The sun will rise at 8:19.  It’ll be up for 8 hours and 52 minutes, setting at 5:11.   The moon, 1 day before new, will rise at 5:54 tomorrow morning.

The year 2011 will be a great one for exploration of the solar system.  Three NASA spacecraft will reach their targets.  On Valentine’s Day the Stardust spacecraft will pass close to Comet Tempel 1, to see the changes in that comet in the 5 and a half years since the Deep Impact spacecraft hit that comet with a 600 pound chunk of copper.  On March 18th, the MESSENGER spacecraft will attempt to enter orbit around Mercury after a seven year long journey.  On July 16th the ion powered Dawn spacecraft will gently assume orbit of the asteroid Vesta.  Vesta is one of the bigger asteroids, being second most massive and the brightest.  It will orbit Vesta for a year before leaving for the dwarf planet Ceres.

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