December 6
The Hare Beneath the Hunter
Sun Position
The Sun is in Sagittarius, roughly 23 degrees south declination. Northern Hemisphere daylight is contracting toward its shortest; southern days are expanding toward their longest.
Sky Highlight
Lepus the Hare is fully visible this week, tucked below Orion's feet in the south for northern observers. The constellation is faint but holds one of December's best globular clusters, M79, and the supergiant Arneb gives it surprising depth for its size.
Deep Sky Object
M79, a compact globular cluster in Lepus about 41,000 light-years away, is notable as one of the few Messier globulars positioned away from the galactic center, it may be an interloper captured from the Canis Major Dwarf Galaxy rather than a native resident of the Milky Way's halo.
Featured Star
Arneb (α Lep) is an F0Ib yellow-white supergiant about 1,300 light-years away, a massive star already evolved far off the main sequence. Despite its distance, it shines brightly enough to anchor Lepus as a constellation, the hare crouching perpetually beneath the heels of the hunter.
Around This Date
- December 6, 1998Astronauts on STS-88 connected Unity, the first U.S.-built ISS module, to the Russian Zarya control module, joining the two pieces that would become the seed of the space station.
- December 9, 1978Multiple Pioneer Venus atmospheric probes transmitted data during their descent through the cloud layers of Venus, one surviving to reach the surface and transmit briefly from the ground.
The hare is not swift in the sky; it sits patient beneath Orion, waiting out every winter with practiced stillness.