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12/04/2018 – Ephemeris – Auriga the Charioteer
Ephemeris for Tuesday, December 4th. The Sun will rise at 8:03. It’ll be up for 8 hours and 59 minutes, setting at 5:02. The Moon, 3 days before new, will rise at 6:03 tomorrow morning.
The constellation Auriga the charioteer is half way up the sky in the east northeast at 9 p.m. It is a pentagon of stars, with the brilliant star Capella at the upper left of its corners. Capella represents a mama goat he’s carrying. A narrow triangle of stars just right of Capella are her kids, that is her baby goats. The Kids is an informal constellation or asterism. The Milky Way runs through Auriga, but it’s not very bright here. We are looking away from the center of the Milky Way to the more sparse outer parts. Within and near that pentagon, one can sweep with binoculars and low power telescopes to find several star clusters, groups of hundreds of stars born in the clump we still see them in. These star clusters will appear as fuzzy spots in binoculars.
The times given are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan. They may be different for your location.
Addendum
Auriga and neighboring constellations for 9 p.m. in early December. Created using Stellarium and GIMP.
12/03/2018 – Ephemeris – Comet Wirtanen should be bright enough for the naked eye or binoculars this month
Ephemeris for Monday, December 3rd. The Sun will rise at 8:02. It’ll be up for 9 hours and 1 minute, setting at 5:03. The Moon, half way from last quarter to new, will rise at 4:56 tomorrow morning.
Beside Comet Machholz-Fujikawa-Iwamoto which I talked about last Thursday and should be at peak brightness about now in the western twilit sky, we have another comet, this one Comet 46P/Wirtanen is brightening in the east in the evening. Wirtanen is a member of the Jupiter family of comets, whose 5.44 year orbit of the Sun takes it from just outside the Earth’s orbit to just inside Jupiter’s orbit. This time around it will come as close as 7.1 million miles of the Earth. As of Thanksgiving the comet was 100 times brighter than its nominal expected brightness. I don’t know if it will stay that way. It has a history of outbursts. If it keeps it up Wirtanen could be as bright as the Pleiades stars when it passes them on the 16th.
The times given are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan. They may be different for your location.
Addendum
The path of Comet 46P/Wirtanen from November 21, 2018, to January 1, 2019. The labels are month, date, and expected magnitude. Click on the image to enlarge. Created using Cartes du Ciel (Sky Charts).
Check back every Wednesday at least where Comet Wirtanen will be past of the planet report. I’ll be covering the comet on other days throughout the month. Also check Seiichi Yoshida’s Weekly Information about Bright Comets: http://www.aerith.net/comet/weekly/current.html
Bob Moler's Ephemeris Blog 