Today:
This year’s Christmas Eve sky features a decorative waxing Crescent Moon emerging one quarter of the way up in the southwest in the late moments of twilight between 5 and 5:30, while the western skies give us a lovely view of an out-of-season pattern, the Summer Triangle, still nearly hafl way up from the horizon. By 8 o’clock, the Triangle’s highest star, Deneb, appears at the top of the Northern Cross, and alternative name for Cygnus, the Swan, appearing to “stand” on the horizon.
Thursday:
Christmas’s connection to astronomy dates back to our earliest European ancestors, knowing that the longest nights of the year would slowly give way to increasing amounts of light and warmth from the Sun. Numerous stone structures, including Stonehenge, tracked the Sun carefully, to help mark the date. Such alignments were incorporated into Mayan buildings in Central America as well.
Friday:
The Moon, one day shy of its First Quarter, does not appear shy at all in its cozy approach to Saturn, somewhat subdued, but visible to the Moon’s lower left, the closest encounter of the Moon to any planet this month. The pair appears due south by 5:15, and then strolls to the lower right through the evening, heading for the western horizon, where they set near 11 o’clock.