SUNSET SKY SHOW: When the sun goes down tonight, step outside and look southwest. Venus and the crescent Moon are having a close encounter in the sunset sky. It's a beautiful way to end the day! [sky map]
JUPITER OUTSHINES THE STARS: See that very bright star at midnight? It's no star. This week, Jupiter outshines everything else in the midnight sky as it makes its annual closest approach to Earth. Look for it between the horns of Taurus the Bull: sky map.
Jupiter over Bluff, Utah, on Dec. 1st. Credit: Paul Martini.
Shining at magnitude -2.8, Jupiter is almost four times brighter than Sirius. Only the sun, Moon and Venus are brighter than the giant planet this week.
Astronomers call this event "opposition," because Jupiter and the sun are on opposite sides of Earth. This diagram explains it all. During the nights around opposition, Jupiter rises in the east at sunset and soars nearly overhead at midnight; it's up all night. The precise moment of closest approach occurs on Dec. 6th, but Jupiter will be extra big and bright all week long.
Photographers, submit your images here!
A MASSIVE THUNDERSTORM ON JUPITER: Jupiter's proximity to Earth is making it easy to see weather on the giant planet. Right now, a massive thunderstorm is brewing, circled in this Nov. 30th image from Austrian astrophotographer Michael Karrer:
"I took the picture using my 8-inch Celestron telescope," says Karrer. "There is a big outbreak in the South Equatorial Belt (SEB)."
"The white plumes are giant thunderstorms," explains John Rogers of the British Astronomical Association. "They're fairly rare. The last time we saw storms like this was 8 years ago in 2016-17."
Like thunderstorms on Earth, thunderstorms on Jupiter are powered by convection. These are rising up from a location ~50 km below the brown cloudtops. Rogers believes the storms could spread rapidly through the SEB, causing the familiar brown belt to fade as its color is diluted by the white storm front.
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CHRISTMAS GIFTS FROM THE EDGE OF SPACE: Christmas is coming. Are you looking for a far-out gift? Check out the Earth to Sky Store. It's filled with unique items that have flown to the edge of space onboard cosmic ray research balloons.
Carried aloft by giant helium balloons, these unique gifts have flown above 99.7% of Earth's atmosphere, experiencing space-like blasts of cosmic rays, extreme cold, and a wild ride parachuting back to Earth after the balloon explodes. Even Amazon doesn't carry items this far out.
Don't forget to enter coupon code "BLACKCAT" at checkout for a 10% holiday discount.
Far Out Gifts: Earth to Sky Store
All sales support hands-on STEM education
UNUSUAL LIGHT PILLARS: This report is for connoisseurs of light pillars. Light pillars are a common sight during winter when artificial lights bounce off ice crystals suspended in the air. They look like this. The light pillars Angela M. saw this weekend at an airport in Finland, however, were not common:
Note the flared tops. That's what's unusual. Ordinary light pillars shoot straight into the sky with pointy tips. The V-shaped tops of these pillars are extremely rare.
The vast majority of light pillars are caused by ice crystals that look like tiny microscopic plates. However, ice crystals floating around the Rovaniemi airport were not little plates; instead, they were little pencils. Pencil-shaped ice crystals create the flare. To see the shape, common crystal plates must be absent. No one knows where they went! So there is an element of mystery, as well.
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