Bob Moler's Ephemeris Blog

Ephemeris for Monday, March 12th.  The sun will rise at 7:59.  It’ll be up for 11 hours and 45 minutes, setting at 7:45.   The moon, 2 days before last quarter, will rise at 1:33 tomorrow morning.

In the western evening sky, Jupiter and Venus are making a pass at each other.  They shouldn’t, in the modern sense since Venus or Aphrodite of the Greeks was the daughter of Jupiter or Zeus.  .Over this week we’ll watch as Jupiter slips below Venus to lead Venus in setting.  Tonight Jupiter is level with and left of Venus.  Venus will always be the brighter of the two.  We also have an aurora watch for this evening.  The sun has been active this weekend with a series of flares emanating from the largest sunspot group now visible called active region 1429.  This group is rotating off so it’s flares soon won’t affect the earth. Check spaceweather.com for the latest. And check bobmoler.wordpress.com for an animation of the planet conjunction.

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

Addendum

Jupiter and Venus at nightly intervals from March 12 to 16, 2012. Created using Stellarium.

The first frame of the animation is for tonight.