Bob Moler's Ephemeris Blog

Ephemeris for Thursday, January 19th.  The sun will rise at 8:13.  It’ll be up for 9 hours and 19 minutes, setting at 5:32.   The moon, 3 days past last quarter, will rise at 5:52 tomorrow morning.

This morning, you might want to take a quick peek outside to the southeast and see, if you can spot the crescent moon.  If you can below and a bit right of it is a bright red star.  That star is Antares in the constellation Scorpius, one of the first constellations of summer to appear in the evening sky.  I thought you’d like the encouragement that summer is coming now that winter has finally come in earnest.  The moon passes Antares every month, but this morning it appears especially close, since their actual closest approach was about 2 this morning.  The entire moon may be faintly visible this morning as earthshine.  Antares itself may be twinkling merrily due to earth’s atmosphere.  It sometimes looks like a sparkler in binoculars.

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

Addendum

The Moon passes Antares in the morning hours of January 19, 2012. Created using Stellarium.