Planet Scenes December 2023
|
December 31 On the last morning of the year, Venus is spending her last day in Libra before moving through the short ecliptic span of Scorpius. Bright moonlight made the sky a pretty shade of blue, and in addition to that we get our first view of Antares in the morning twilight. |
||
|
December 20 A few days ago, Venus made a nice straight line with α and β Librae, but now it has moved below that line a bit as it continues to decrease in altitude while remaining north of the ecliptic. |
||
|
December 19 One of my buddies is in Florida during the Christmas holiday with his son, and he got this great shot of the sunset from a highrise hotel in western Orlando. Great shot, Matt! |
||
|
|
December 14 The Moon has returned to the evening sky as a two-day old crescent, joined in this view by several stars of Sagittarius. Mercury was too far away to capture in this 300mm telephoto view. |
|
|
December 13 Venus has moved in Libra and is noticeably lower in the morning sky than it was in the late summer and early fall. |
||
|
December 12 Jupiter continues to reign over the evening sky but shares occupancy of Aries the Ram with Uranus. They are both in the latter stages of their periods of retrograde motion, which will end on December 31 and January 27, 2024, respectively. |
||
|
December 11 Mercury continues its nice evening apparition, although by now it is dimming because it is heading around toward inferior conjunction; so in this position, Mercury still has a good elongation but its phase is decreasing while its size is slowly increasing. |
||
|
|
December 6 Mercury has finally moved to a great enough elongation east of the Sun so that it can now be seen in deep twilight, enough for a nice picture showing some of the background stars. Here we see it very near the apex of the teapot of Sagittarius. Jupiter and Uranus are still in Aries, continuing to retrograde toward their respective positions of quadrature. |
|
|
December 5 Venus continues to dominate the pre-dawn sky, still in Virgo but now having passed Spica well to the north. On this morning, under a last quarter Moon, we were lucky to catch a sporadic meteor flitting through Libra. |
||