December 9
The Camels Drinking
Sun Position
The Sun is in Sagittarius, near 23.3 degrees south declination. Northern Hemisphere daylight has contracted to near its annual minimum; southern observers are within two weeks of the year's longest day.
Sky Highlight
Eridanus, the celestial river, winds southward from near Rigel all the way to Achernar near the south celestial pole, but in December only the northern stretches of the constellation are well placed for northern observers. The entire river is visible to southern hemisphere observers during December evenings.
Deep Sky Object
M79, the compact globular cluster in Lepus, reaches a reasonable elevation for northern observers in the evening hours; binoculars show it as a fuzzy star, while even a modest telescope begins to resolve its dense outer regions.
Featured Star
Nihal (β Lep) is a G5II yellow bright giant about 159 light-years away, a star past its main-sequence prime and expanded to giant dimensions. Its Arabic name is sometimes said to derive from a group of stars imagined as camels drinking at a watering place, a pastoral image from the landscape where the name was coined.
Around This Date
- December 9, 1978The Pioneer Venus Multiprobe mission deployed four atmospheric entry probes into Venus; the Day probe, though not designed to survive landing, continued transmitting data from the surface for 67 minutes before succumbing to the heat.
- December 15, 1970The Soviet Venera 7 spacecraft became the first to successfully land on another planet and transmit data from the surface, returning temperature and pressure readings from the Venusian ground for about 23 minutes.
Nihal is the sort of gentle name that only makes sense under a desert sky; the star keeps the company of the camels that named it.