Bob Moler's Ephemeris Blog

Veteran’s Day, Friday, November 11th.  The sun will rise at 7:33.  It’ll be up for 9 hours and 45 minutes, setting at 5:19.   The moon, 1 day past full, will rise at 5:43 this evening.

Lets check out again the giant planet Jupiter, visible in the southeastern sky in the evening.  Jupiter is more massive than all the other planets, moons, and asteroids twice over.  [In fact the famous science and science fiction writer Isaac Asimov once stated that the solar system consists of the sun, Jupiter and debris.]  Jupiter is huge, 11 times the earth’s diameter, and 13 hundred times its volume.  It is mostly made of hydrogen with methane and ammonia clouds.  In the deeper parts of Jupiter the temperature rises as the pressure increases, compressing the hydrogen into a hot sea.  Thee is nowhere on Jupiter to land.  Below that it turns into a liquid metallic hydrogen, and Jupiter’s rapid 10 hour spin creates a huge magnetic field and radiation bands.

* Times are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan.  They may be different for your location.  Text in brackets omitted from program due to time constraints.