Wow! On December 8, the ACEAP 2020 cohort makes its much, much, much-anticipated journey down south. As you can see, my bags are packed and I'm good to go.
And that's not all, folks.
Coming up on Wednesday night, December 7 is a solar system spectacular with the two brightest objects in the winter evening sky.
The moon is full at 908pm Mountain Standard Time. Mars reaches opposition to the sun at 1036pm MST. And the moon will eclipse – occult is the general term for this type of event – the planet across most of North America.
Where I live in Albuquerque, Mars disappears behind the lunar limb around 740pm and reappears just about one hour later at 838pm.
Visible with the unaided eye, the occultation isn't instantaneous, as Mars presents a disk. So the disappearance and reappearance will each take most of a minute.
The image shows a simulated view from the phone planetarium app Sky Portal of the beginning of the event from New Mexico.
What a send-off for our ACEAP 2020 cohort!
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