Bob Moler's Ephemeris Blog

Ephemeris for Friday, December 21st.  The sun will rise at 8:16.  It’ll be up for 8 hours and 48 minutes, setting at 5:05.   The moon, 1 day past first quarter, will set at 2:53 tomorrow morning.

Well, we’re still here.  The winter solstice arrived at 6:12 this morning, and nothing happened.  There’s no planetary alignment.  The supposed alignment with the center of the galaxy, which is 6 degrees off anyway was at its closest 15 years ago.   And the supposed planet Nibiru that was to collide with the earth or interfere with the earth somehow,  hasn’t shown up.  Even we amateur astronomers would have seen it for at least the last 5 years.  To those who say its sneaking up on us from behind the sun.  I say we have spacecraft flying all over the solar system, so we don’t have any blind spots for it to hide in.  So I wonder when the next prediction of the end of the world will pop up, to which I will sigh:  “Not again.”

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

Addendum

The sun at the winter solstice 2012. The horizontal line is the sun’s path, the ecliptic, while the diagonal line is the galactic equator. Sagittarius A is the location of the center of the galaxy some 26,000 light years away behind a black cloud of dust and gas.  Created using Cartes du Ciel.