Bob Moler's Ephemeris Blog

Thursday, January 6th.  The sun will rise at 8:19.  It’ll be up for 8 hours and 58 minutes, setting at 5:17.   The moon, 2 days past new, will set at 8:00 this evening.

The bright red star in constellation Orion’s shoulder is Betelgeuse, and its now thought to be about 640 light years away.  Betelgeuse is a shortened form of an Arabic phrase that means “Armpit of the central one”.  Orion is seen in the southeast at 9 in the evening.  Even at Betelgeuse’ great distance it’s the star whose surface is easiest seen, after the sun of course.  That’s because it’s so big.  As large around as the half the size of the orbit of Jupiter.  Betelgeuse is  losing mass in a huge cloud around it.  It is a massive star in the late stages of its life. Some astronomers speculate that it will explode in a massive supernova within the next million years.  [Astronomers also speculate that Betelgeuse may have originated from the area of Orion’s  belt twice a far away from us.]

*Text in brackets was omitted due to time constraints

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

Orion via Stellarium.org