Bob Moler's Ephemeris Blog

Monday, January 2nd 2012.  The sun will rise at 8:19.  It’ll be up for 8 hours and 54 minutes, setting at 5:13.   The moon, 1 day past first quarter, will set at 3:04 tomorrow morning.

Tonight the bright planet Jupiter will appear below the moon.  This is a great time to try out that new telescope or binoculars, or dig that old one out of the closet or attic.  With a telescope use the lowest power to locate the moon and get an overview.  The bright southern part of the moon, which may appear at the top of the image, because telescopes normally invert the image is heavily cratered.  The other part has several dark nearly flat structures called seas.  These are really huge craters that caused the internal lava to well up, making the smooth floors. Recently some astronomers hypothesized that a second moon was created with ours and that it crashed into our moon creating the lunar seas.

* Times, as always are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan.

Addendum

Jupiter appears below moon Jan 2, 2012 9 p.m. Created using Stellarium.