Bob Moler's Ephemeris Blog

This is Ephemeris for Monday, January 6th. Today the Sun will be up for 8 hours and 58 minutes, setting at 5:18, and it will rise tomorrow at 8:19. The Moon, at first quarter today, will set at 1:26 tomorrow morning.

Lately there’s been a lot of reported observations of drones or various things in the sky at night, especially, for some reason, in New Jersey. If it’s something that’s moving in the sky other than satellites, meteors and aurorae, they’re out of my wheelhouse. I generally concern myself with the sidereal universe, the universe beyond the atmosphere. Things that don’t seem to move that rapidly. There are a lot of bright lights in the sky, that are things that I can and do talk about this time of year and this particular year. We have a lot of bright lights in the sky now, foremost Venus in the southwest in the early evening, and Jupiter in the east and the south. Mars is also up, but it’s not in competition with Jupiter this year. These plus the bright winter stars.

The astronomical event times given are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan (EST, UT – 5 hours). Times will be different for other locations.

Addendum