Thursday brings two celestial milestones: it marks the latest sunrise of the year and it marks perihelion, earth’s closest point to the sun.     Intuitively, you might expect the closer to the sun we are the warmer the weather. However, the three million miles difference between perihelion and aphelion — our farthest point from the sun in July — is not near enough to account for the changing seasons. Instead, earth’s 231⁄2-degree tilted axis brings...

All the naked-eye planets decorate our night skies the next couple weeks, with the two brightest coming into view at sunset but all staggered throughout the dark hours.     The sun sets around 4:45 this week. By that time you’re likely to see Jupiter presiding over the eastern skies. Look to the opposite horizon where Venus blazes even brighter in the wake of the setting sun. Venus sets within two hours of the sun. Jupiter, on the other hand, shines through much of the...

No doubt you’ve noticed the blazing light high in the east at sunset. The planet Jupiter rules over the rising stars of autumn and blazes until the wee hours before dawn. By 9pm it is a little to the south of the sky’s zenith; by 1am, Old Jove is high above the west horizon until finally setting in the northwest around 4am.     As if Jupiter didn’t stand out enough, it appears all the more prominent Monday and Tuesday, when it’s joined by the waxing...

In the dark before dawn Friday, countless pieces of cosmic debris bombard the earth as it passes through the path left by comet Tempel-Tuttle. As these bits of ice and dust collide against the planet’s atmosphere, they burst aflame. While none of these threaten the planet, few of them will be visible against the light of the first-quarter moon, which coincides with the peak of this year’s Leonid meteor shower.     Under dark skies, the Leonids typically deliver 10 to...