Today:
Near the zenith – the very top of the sky – at 9:00 PM this evening is one of the treasures of the deep sky. A dark location and clear skies will reveal the Andromeda Galaxy, the most distant object the human eye can see without the help of telescopes or binoculars, 2.5 million light years from here.
Saturday:
Today marks the latest sunrise of the year. But wait, doesn’t that happen in December near the Winter Solstice? That would be true, except the date for changing from Daylight Saving Time to Standard Time now occurs so late, that our sunrise is ten minutes later today, than in late December.
Sunday:
Standard Time has returned, but what does that mean? The idea of a “standard” time, and time zones, replaced the Sun as the method for determining noon. Local noon is when the Sun is directly south, but when trains made long distance travel possible in the 1800s, train schedules required standardized, rather than local time.