[perhaps applicable to Malaysia only]

Did you notice that on the evening of Christmas eve, the sky was clear, the full moon was right above, Jupiter was near it, and even Aldebaran was perhaps visible?

We sat outside the church for Christmas Eve mass. The weather was beautiful – my 5-year old daughter took the following photo with a phone about 5 minutes before mass started at 8pm. I think the lights from the moon and Jupiter contrasted nicely with lights from the church building:

When I checked again during the evening of 26th December, it’s even clearer, due to cloudless sky. What a beautiful sight.

- Full moon (well, almost 100%)
- Jupiter even closer to the moon than during Christmas Eve. It’s 143,000 km in diameter, and 674 million km away.
- the object next to Jupiter is Aldebaran, a star, 61 million km in diameter (much much bigger than our sun), and 6 x 10^14 km away (= 65 light years away)
- the object nearest the moon on the other side could be the Pleiades (Seven Sisters) star cluster, even further away from us than even Aldebaran (4 x 10^15 km away)

Permalink | life in general |