Bob Moler's Ephemeris Blog

Tuesday, January 11th.  The sun will rise at 8:17.  It’ll be up for 9 hours and 5 minutes, setting at 5:23.   The moon, 1 day before first quarter, will set at 1:08 tomorrow morning.

The Stardust spacecraft is 34 days from its flyby of the comet Tempel 1 on Valentine’s day.  This is the comet visited and impacted by the spacecraft Deep Impact five and a half years ago, on the 4th of July 2005.  The purpose of this flyby is to study the impact crater created by Deep Impact, and the changes in the comet’s nucleus since the last encounter.  Comet’s undergo wear and tear as they approach the sun sublimating their ices and liberating dust that forms their head and tail.  The Stardust spacecraft is having some problems.  It hasn’t imaged the comet for fine guidance yet, and apparently it has less maneuvering fuel than initially thought.  In order to image the impact crater the rotation period of the comet must be known to a great precision.  I’m not sure they do.

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