December Sky this Month Shows Coming Up

Venus (L) and waxing crescent moon (R). Photo by Ian Clarke.

Sunday, November 30, 4:00 PM
Tuesday, December 2, 7:00 PM

Yes, that's right - we scheduled a show on Thanksgiving weekend. Oops! But we hope a few people can make a family event of it and enjoy our preview of the winter skies. If not then, come Tuesday night for the encore. The show will include recent astronomy news, for example what's next for the Rosetta probe at Comet 69P. We'll go over the local almanac and the reasons for the seasons. Then we'll use the planetarium to point out the sky sights you can enjoy over the next several weeks. The Hatter Planetarium is located in Masters Hall on the Gettysburg College campus. All shows are free and open to the public and last about 50 minutes. Note: there is no monthly skyshow for January as it would fall during the college's winter break.

Late November Astrominute

The late November Hatter Planetarium / WZBT astrominute is on the air and on line. Text below the link:

http://public.gettysburg.edu/~iclarke/hatter/podcasts/astrominute111414.mp3

Here is your Gettysburg Astrominute for late November, 2014. The evening skies will be moonless the week of the 16th but look for a growing crescent moon in the west after sunset the following week. On Thanksgiving night, a 23% crescent will be shining just above Mars in the southwest. Official winter is still a month away, but with the sun now setting in before 5:00 PM, it feels like it’s here now. The true harbinger of the season - Orion, the great hunter - is now rising due east by 9: PM. Look for it earlier and earlier as the weeks go by. Just as Orion is rising, look for the Pleiades - or seven sisters - half way up in the east. At midinight they will be almost directly overhead. (This was the time of year the ancient Celts celebrated Samhain, one of the predecessors of Halloween.) And at midnight, with the Pleiades overhead, turn back to the east to see Jupiter rising. It is not at its brightest now, but it’s still brighter than any star in the sky. The astrominute is a production of Gettysburg College’s Hatter Planetarium and WZBT.