The sun makes its southward march

If you are a person who notices such things, and I am, the sun has been creeping further along the eastern horizon at sunrise and the western horizon at sunset in its day-by-day march south toward the winter solstice on Dec. 19.

Another thing we can notice in this southward march is we are not getting as many daylight hours. The days are growing shorter and the nights are growing longer.

Now, with an astronomer, that is not a bad thing, there is more time to observe objects in the sky. The major drawback is the temperatures are also getting shorter. Observing sessions are likely to be shorter too.

We have discussed before that with a 23.5-degree tilt of the Earth's axis, the northern hemisphere is slowly tilting away from the sun thus receiving less light.

At the same time the southern hemisphere is receiving more light and heat, and they are approaching summer. I have always been fascinated to see photographs from Australia of Santa Clause surfing on a sunny beach at Christmas time.

The winter constellations are also creeping into our view in the early evening hours. Taurus and Auriga are already viewable by 7 p.m. with Orion and Gemini on the scene by 10 p.m. Taurus boasts bright Aldebaran as the "eye" of the Bull, Auriga has almost equally bright Capella.

Rectangular Gemini boasts the twins, Castor and Pollux with the latter being the brighter of the two and we all know about bright red Betelgeuse as the upper right shoulder of Orion and bright blue Rigel as the left knee.

And lest we forget extremely bright Sirius in Canis Major, the big dog that follows Orion in his travels across the winter sky and Procyon the brightest star in Canis Minor, the little dog, who leads the hunter into the evening sky.

SKY WATCH: The full moon tonight will pretty much wipe out any early evening viewing for the next several days. Two items you won't have any problem viewing are the planets Venus and Jupiter. Both are extremely noticeable in southwestern sky just after sunset.

Venus will be the one farthest west. Jupiter, the largest of the planets is farther east and higher in the sky. Keep your eye on these two during the rest of the month of November. They will be drawing closer to each other toward and extremely close conjunction on Nov. 30. The pair will be joined by a four-day old thin crescent moon the next evening which will make a very nice sight for binocular observation.

NEXT TIME: More astronomical blathering.