Blue Moon

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Well here we are with the last Scilly Stars of the year, nay the whole decade, perhaps if this was Household tips or even a clever pets spot, it would be appropriate to do a round up but its not so I won’t, and anyway the only thing I can remember was the total Lunar Eclipse of August 2009, when town was full thronged with panicking locals who were convinced the end of the world was imminent, being reassured by east European seasonal workers mopping there brows and telling them in perfect English that the moon will come back. And that’s my review of the decade.

Not much going on this week, though I expect you're all to jaded to care, but on Thursday, New Years Eve by the way, we have a full moon, the second full moon in December, which means it’s a blue moon, which means we must have another in January as well, except its full at 7:15, so technically it won’t be full on New Years Day, but its good enough for me. So how exciting two blue moons in a row.

And on Thursday again, there’s a very slight partial lunar eclipse from 18:52 to 19:54.

What else do we have this week, well like last week and next week Orion's Belt points the way down to rising Sirius. Betelgeuse, Sirius, and Procyon form the nearly equilateral Winter Triangle. And if you don’t know where Orion is yet have a look at the blog.

Mercury is still just about there in the sunset, going down shortly after the Sun. Venus is on winter vacation on the other side of the sun.

Mars getting brighter all the time now in Leo rises around 9 p.m. local time, far below Castor and Pollux in Gemini a bit north of east. A little later, dimmer Regulus rises about a fist-width beneath it. By 2 or 3 a.m. Mars and Regulus are highest in the south, lined up horizontally.

Saturn (magnitude +0.9, in the head of Virgo) rises in the east around midnight and shines highest in the south before and during dawn. Its rings are still narrow, tilted 4.8° from edge-on to us.

Jupiter, bar the moon far away the brightest object in the sky, brightly in the south-southwest in twilight, and lower in the southwest after dark. It sets around 9 p.m.

Now for the lucky among you Santa came a bit late this year, but for others not at all, why? Well I was talking to a very tired Black Shadow on Boxing Day, and it seems that she blackmailed Santa, she showed me the photos, into letting her borrow his fully laden sleigh this year, which has Tardis like properties, Barbara tells me. Anyway she took what she wanted and gave him a detritus laden sleigh back in the early hours of Christmas morning. She then blindfolded me and took me to her secret hideaway in the depths of mount moorwell, which is now a Aladdin’s cave stuffed full of plasma TVs, laptops and iphones. Well as she said on happy talk only last week it supplements the pension.

That was your night’s sky on the 288th anniversary of The Committee of Inquiry on the South Sea Bubble publishing its findings.