Bob Moler's Ephemeris Blog

Monday, December 26th.  The sun will rise at 8:18.  It’ll be up for 8 hours and 49 minutes, setting at 5:07.   The moon, 2 days past new, will set at 7:40 this evening.

Comet Lovejoy has been the morning Christmas comet for folks in the southern hemisphere for the past week.  After whipping around the sun and losing its tail comet Lovejoy grew another brighter tail that has been greeting early risers in the southern hemisphere since the 17th..  It surprised the astronauts on the International Space Station, who were not given the heads up in advance.  However they did get some great time lapse movies of the comet rising.  From the ground the tail rose for 40 or so minutes before the head.  The comet is moving away from the sun so its heads out tail first.  Comet Lovejoy hasn’t made it big on normal news channels, but astronomical sites on the Internet have been buzzing with the latest news.

* Times, as always are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan.

Addendum

www.spaceweather.com is a great place to start.  Look in their archives for the past week too.