It's the middle of January, and I can't recall our last day of sunshine. But, last night was clear as a bell, (albeit pretty darn cold, too). Today was absolutely beautiful and the clear skies are supposed to last until Thursday. In honor of the appearance of the Sun, I drove to Mukilteo (here in the Puget Sound area) and simply watched the sunset. There were several people on the beach, all enjoying the view. The glare of the sun over the Olympic Mountains and the reflection across Puget Sound made for an almost hypnotic evening. Although the temperatures didn't get much above 40 all day, sunset was definately a happy time.....

I was browsing through some recent photographs I had taken, and found this one of the Moon rising over Meadowcreek Park Observatory. Notice the pinkish haze near the horizon? That is called the Belt of Venus. This view is looking east, as the Moon is rising. The Sun is setting in the west. As the Sun sinks lower below the horizon in the west, Earth's shadow rises higher in the east. The Belt of Venus is a band of pink between the sky and Earth's shadow seen above the eastern horizon during and just after sunset.

As I mentioned in a previous post, astronomy here in the Northwest is a hit-and-miss proposition....especially this time of year. Well, last night (New Year's Eve) was no different. Fortunately, the skies cleared for about 4 hours, and I was able to get out and get some great video of Mars.

Using a software program, I combined the individual frames from one of the video sequences to create this photo....

The north Polar Cap can be seen at the top, while several darker features are clearly visible.

Mars reached it's closest distance to Earth on December 18th, and was at "opposition" on December 24 (meaning it was directly opposite the Sun from Earth, just like a Full Moon).

As Mars' orbit continues around the Sun, it will increase in distance from Earth. This is because Earth is on the "inside track", and is traveling faster around the Sun than Mars. As our line of sight to Mars changes, the Red Planet will appear smaller (increasing distance) and it will begin "phasing". As the Sun-Earth-Mars angle changes, a shadow will slowly creep across the planet, just like on the Moon after being "full".