Archive
12/31/2013 – Ephemeris – That was the year that was
Ephemeris for New Years Eve, Tuesday, December 31st. The sun will rise at 8:19. It’ll be up for 8 hours and 52 minutes, setting at 5:12. The moon, 1 day before new, will rise at 8:06 tomorrow morning.
Let’s pause on this last day of 2013 to look back at the year in astronomy and space. One of the two hopefully bright comets panned out this year.. That was PanSTARRS last March. Unfortunately Comet ISON disintegrated Thanksgiving day. I hope you saw the videos of that. In July the Cassini spacecraft took a beautiful photo of Saturn, its rings and the inner planets including the Earth and the Moon. Earlier this month it was reported that the Jupiter’s moon Europa has a south polar water plume, like Saturn’s Enceladus. The Voyager 1 spacecraft has left the Sun’s magnetic bubble to enter the interstellar medium. The biggest news was that a large meteoroid exploded over Siberia February 15th.
Times are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan. They may be different for your location.
Bob Moler's Ephemeris Blog 