When I was in Tucson recently, I marveled at the lack of orange sky glow over the city – the night sky was beautiful, and you could see many more stars from within the Tucson city limits, than I can see living 24 miles north of Detroit. See my previous post about Light Pollution. Venus continues to move away from Jupiter in the southeastern predawn sky; a waning crescent Moon joins Venus and Jupiter on the mornings of Jan. 29-31. Several familiar constellations and bright stars appear in the east-southeastern sky after sunset. Mars appears high in the southwestern sky after sunset all week. Mars is a little getting higher, and drifting a little westward with each day. I haven’t touched on the sky seen from the southern hemisphere in a while, so here’s the southeastern sky at 11:00 PM as seen from Río Gallegos – far to the south in South America. Crux – the “Southern Cross” is visible, as is Rigel Kentaurus, … Continue reading →