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4S Ranch Allied Gardens Alpine Baja Balboa Park Bankers Hill Barrio Logan Bay Ho Bay Park Black Mountain Ranch Blossom Valley Bonita Bonsall Borrego Springs Boulevard Campo Cardiff-by-the-Sea Carlsbad Carmel Mountain Carmel Valley Chollas View Chula Vista City College City Heights Clairemont College Area Coronado CSU San Marcos Cuyamaca College Del Cerro Del Mar Descanso Downtown San Diego Eastlake East Village El Cajon Emerald Hills Encanto Encinitas Escondido Fallbrook Fletcher Hills Golden Hill Grant Hill Grantville Grossmont College Guatay Harbor Island Hillcrest Imperial Beach Imperial Valley Jacumba Jamacha-Lomita Jamul Julian Kearny Mesa Kensington La Jolla Lakeside La Mesa Lemon Grove Leucadia Liberty Station Lincoln Acres Lincoln Park Linda Vista Little Italy Logan Heights Mesa College Midway District MiraCosta College Miramar Miramar College Mira Mesa Mission Beach Mission Hills Mission Valley Mountain View Mount Hope Mount Laguna National City Nestor Normal Heights North Park Oak Park Ocean Beach Oceanside Old Town Otay Mesa Pacific Beach Pala Palomar College Palomar Mountain Paradise Hills Pauma Valley Pine Valley Point Loma Point Loma Nazarene Potrero Poway Rainbow Ramona Rancho Bernardo Rancho Penasquitos Rancho San Diego Rancho Santa Fe Rolando San Carlos San Marcos San Onofre Santa Ysabel Santee San Ysidro Scripps Ranch SDSU Serra Mesa Shelltown Shelter Island Sherman Heights Skyline Solana Beach Sorrento Valley Southcrest South Park Southwestern College Spring Valley Stockton Talmadge Temecula Tierrasanta Tijuana UCSD University City University Heights USD Valencia Park Valley Center Vista Warner Springs

The Green Flash – go to the ocean for sunset, the mountains for sunrise

December's full moon is closest to Earth

The ethereal green flash in action
The ethereal green flash in action

The Fabled “Green Flash” at sunset or sunrise can sometimes be seen on crystal-clear days in December and January. At the instant the sun’s upper rim is last visible at sunset, and also at the instant when it is first seen at sunrise, a flash of emerald-green color may be observed, especially on a flat horizon. Physicists explain this peculiar phenomenon as due to color-dispersion (as in a prism) and scattering of sunlight through the earth’s atmosphere. Binoculars (or a small telescope) are helpful in spotting it. For greenflash hunting at sunset, any site with a view of the ocean horizon suffices. For the sunrise green flash, any spot overlooking the low desert (Sunrise Highway in the Laguna Mountains, for example) is good.

December full moon

December’s Full Moon - named the “cold moon,”“oak moon,”“wolf moon,” and “moon of long nights” according to the traditions of certain past cultures - rises spectacularly over the eastern horizon, only a few minutes after the time of sunset, on the evening of Tuesday, December 29 Some 14 hours later the moon sets in the west near the time of sunrise. Winter-solstice full moons spend a long time (14 hours) in the night sky (as seen from San Diego), just as the summer-solstice sun spends about 14 hours arcing across the daytime sky. The month’s full moon is also notable for being a “perihelion full moon,”which means that the moon is in a position closest to Earth along its elliptical orbit. The moon appears to be a little larger than normal in the sky as a result of this.

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Orion shines in the east-southeast after dinnertime.

A Christmas star-tower This is the time of year when Orion shines in the east-southeast after dinnertime. He's well up now, but his three-star Belt is still nearly vertical. The Belt points up toward Aldebaran and, even higher, the Pleiades.

Jupiter and Saturn (magnitudes –2.0 and +0.6, respectively) shine historically close together in the southwest during and after twilight this week. Jupiter is the bright one; Saturn is only about a tenth as bright. Their separation shrinks from 0.3° on December 18th to 0.1° at conjunction on the 21st, then widens to 0.5° by the 25th. This means they'll fit together in many telescopes' low-power view all week. Just don't expect to see much of any telescopic detail on the two planets, due to the poor atmospheric seeing at their low altitude.

The above comes from the Outdoors listings in the Reader compiled by Jerry Schad, author of Afoot & Afield in San Diego County. Schad died in 2011. Planet information from SkyandTelescope.org.

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The ethereal green flash in action
The ethereal green flash in action

The Fabled “Green Flash” at sunset or sunrise can sometimes be seen on crystal-clear days in December and January. At the instant the sun’s upper rim is last visible at sunset, and also at the instant when it is first seen at sunrise, a flash of emerald-green color may be observed, especially on a flat horizon. Physicists explain this peculiar phenomenon as due to color-dispersion (as in a prism) and scattering of sunlight through the earth’s atmosphere. Binoculars (or a small telescope) are helpful in spotting it. For greenflash hunting at sunset, any site with a view of the ocean horizon suffices. For the sunrise green flash, any spot overlooking the low desert (Sunrise Highway in the Laguna Mountains, for example) is good.

December full moon

December’s Full Moon - named the “cold moon,”“oak moon,”“wolf moon,” and “moon of long nights” according to the traditions of certain past cultures - rises spectacularly over the eastern horizon, only a few minutes after the time of sunset, on the evening of Tuesday, December 29 Some 14 hours later the moon sets in the west near the time of sunrise. Winter-solstice full moons spend a long time (14 hours) in the night sky (as seen from San Diego), just as the summer-solstice sun spends about 14 hours arcing across the daytime sky. The month’s full moon is also notable for being a “perihelion full moon,”which means that the moon is in a position closest to Earth along its elliptical orbit. The moon appears to be a little larger than normal in the sky as a result of this.

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Orion shines in the east-southeast after dinnertime.

A Christmas star-tower This is the time of year when Orion shines in the east-southeast after dinnertime. He's well up now, but his three-star Belt is still nearly vertical. The Belt points up toward Aldebaran and, even higher, the Pleiades.

Jupiter and Saturn (magnitudes –2.0 and +0.6, respectively) shine historically close together in the southwest during and after twilight this week. Jupiter is the bright one; Saturn is only about a tenth as bright. Their separation shrinks from 0.3° on December 18th to 0.1° at conjunction on the 21st, then widens to 0.5° by the 25th. This means they'll fit together in many telescopes' low-power view all week. Just don't expect to see much of any telescopic detail on the two planets, due to the poor atmospheric seeing at their low altitude.

The above comes from the Outdoors listings in the Reader compiled by Jerry Schad, author of Afoot & Afield in San Diego County. Schad died in 2011. Planet information from SkyandTelescope.org.

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4S Ranch Allied Gardens Alpine Baja Balboa Park Bankers Hill Barrio Logan Bay Ho Bay Park Black Mountain Ranch Blossom Valley Bonita Bonsall Borrego Springs Boulevard Campo Cardiff-by-the-Sea Carlsbad Carmel Mountain Carmel Valley Chollas View Chula Vista City College City Heights Clairemont College Area Coronado CSU San Marcos Cuyamaca College Del Cerro Del Mar Descanso Downtown San Diego Eastlake East Village El Cajon Emerald Hills Encanto Encinitas Escondido Fallbrook Fletcher Hills Golden Hill Grant Hill Grantville Grossmont College Guatay Harbor Island Hillcrest Imperial Beach Imperial Valley Jacumba Jamacha-Lomita Jamul Julian Kearny Mesa Kensington La Jolla Lakeside La Mesa Lemon Grove Leucadia Liberty Station Lincoln Acres Lincoln Park Linda Vista Little Italy Logan Heights Mesa College Midway District MiraCosta College Miramar Miramar College Mira Mesa Mission Beach Mission Hills Mission Valley Mountain View Mount Hope Mount Laguna National City Nestor Normal Heights North Park Oak Park Ocean Beach Oceanside Old Town Otay Mesa Pacific Beach Pala Palomar College Palomar Mountain Paradise Hills Pauma Valley Pine Valley Point Loma Point Loma Nazarene Potrero Poway Rainbow Ramona Rancho Bernardo Rancho Penasquitos Rancho San Diego Rancho Santa Fe Rolando San Carlos San Marcos San Onofre Santa Ysabel Santee San Ysidro Scripps Ranch SDSU Serra Mesa Shelltown Shelter Island Sherman Heights Skyline Solana Beach Sorrento Valley Southcrest South Park Southwestern College Spring Valley Stockton Talmadge Temecula Tierrasanta Tijuana UCSD University City University Heights USD Valencia Park Valley Center Vista Warner Springs
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