When the Sun Stands Still
As the sun sets, look in its wake for Mercury just above the southwest horizon. Binoculars will help. Mercury is on its way up to a fine showing through Christmas and New Year’s.
Before dawn, Venus, Mars and Jupiter stretch above the horizon in the southeast. A little below Mars is Spica. Saturn rises just before the sun and is far to the lower left of Venus, so low that you may need binoculars to spot it.
Tuesday at 11:48pm EST, the sun reaches its southernmost position in the sky, hovering directly over the Tropic of Capricorn at 231⁄2 degrees south latitude. This solstice, literally sun stands still, marks the start of winter for us in the Northern Hemisphere. The sun rises and sets at its farthest point south, traveling a low, shallow arch from horizon to horizon in the shortest day of the year, with a meager 9 hours 28 minutes of sunlight in Chesapeake Country.
Watching the sunrise or sunset, you will notice the sun pause for a number of days, but then it slowly inches northward on the sky’s dome. A great experiment for kids of all ages is to use an east- or west-facing window to mark with a grease pen or piece of tape the point where the sun meets the horizon each day or night.
Solstice coincides with the Ursid meteor shower, which typically peaks at five to 10 meteors an hour but occasionally has bursts of 100 or more. The waxing gibbous moon sets before dawn, so that’s when you’re likely to see the most activity.