January’s New Moon falls on the 8th, the Full Moon on the 22nd. February starts with a close conjunction of Venus and Jupiter in the morning sky plus an Annular Eclipse of the Sun on the 7th, unfortunately only visible from the southern hemisphere. In contrast, much of North America is well placed for the Total Lunar Eclipse on the evening of the 20th (local time). February has an extra, 29th day this leap year. In March, we spring forward to daylight time on the 9th, even before the Equinox on the 20th. The Full Moon (21st) and Easter (23rd) follow soon after. The club’s Star Gaze XIV Star Party runs from April 2nd through the New Moon on the 6th. Star party attendees will enjoy four of the five bright, ancient planets if they stay up all night. Be sure to check out Saturn, its rings are at nearly maximum tilt on the 30th.

May’s New Moon falls on the 5th, the Full Moon on the 20th. June has a Friday the 13th, and a Full Moon on the 18th is actually the fourth of the season, making it a Blue Moon, according to the original definition. The Solstice on the 20th marks the start of our Summer, and Pluto is at opposition on the same date. Jupiter reaches opposition of the 9th of July, while Mars and Saturn have a close conjunction: enjoy the sight of both planetary disks in a single eyepiece field of view. August has two New Moons (the first on the 1st is a Total Solar Eclipse) and fairly favorable conditions for the Perseid meteor shower. Full Moon on the 16th passes into Partial Lunar Eclipse, although neither of August’s eclipses is visible from Delmarva.

Venus, Mars and Mercury dance in the evening twilight at the start of September, but by the No Frills XIII Star Party on the 24th through 28th only Venus will still be visible. The Equinox occurs on the 22nd, the next New Moon falls on the 29th. Aside from the Full Harvest Moon on October 14th, nothing much happens in that month. We fall back from daylight time on November 2nd. Viewing the Leonid shower with a past-full (13th) gibbous moon is particularly unfavorable this year. December opens with a dramatic conjunction of Venus and Jupiter joined by the crescent moon on the 1st. Days grow longer after the Solstice on the 21st, and the last New Moon of the year occurs on the 27th. Alas, after a banner start and favorable viewing through much of the year, Mars is now invisibly lost in the glare of the Sun.

Full Moons start the year in the latter half of the month and advance about a day per month throughout year. For deep-sky aficionados, this means that the best observing—without interference from moonlight—falls either in the first week (January through June) or the last week (July-December) of the month. Gazers anticipating the Messier Marathon, attempting to see all M-objects in one night, get two opportunities: around the 8th of March (9.4 h of deep night) or on the last weekend (29th, 6.2 h). June closes on the 30th with the shortest night without a moon, only 5.1 hours, while the longest deep night, 11.4 hours, comes right in time for Christmas, 2008.

The web has many resources and sites for planning this year's observing: for sky events and planetary phenomena, all about eclipses, and moon phases, rises and sets for your backyard, Tuckahoe, and the rest of the world. Check regularly our club’s Yahoo! discussion group and Spaceweather.com for upcoming events and the latest in celestial news.

Dates for local circumstances are Universal Times (UT) at Tuckahoe State Park, the Delmarva Star Gazers dark sky site. A customized deep night table and a moon phase calendar  usable through 2009 are also available. Additional information can be found in Guy Ottewell’s Astronomical Calendar 2008. Moondark is written by Doug Miller, published at the Moondark web site, and printed in the Delmarva Star Gazers' Star Gazer News. This document was last revised on 29 December 2007. Text and images on this web page are free for non-commercial use with attribution under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-commercial 3.0 License. Ask Doug about other uses.