US Edition The chart shows the sky at the start of December. The positions of the stars on other nights can be found from previous charts (our last appeared on November 3) for they rise two hours earlier each month. Thus, the appearance of the sky at 10 pm at the beginning of December (except for the Moon and planets) is identical to that a month ago.
The Moon, full on the 6th and new on the 22nd, is shown in its various phases. The hazy area represents the billions of stars of the Milky Way. Constellations are in white, and the brighter stars are ringed and yellow. The larger the ring, the brighter the star.
A new cold war seems certain to start within the next few decades, waged not on Earth, but in space.
It would be carried on, not with nuclear-tipped missiles as before, but with destructive laser beams. These, travelling at the speed of light, 670 million mph, would reach their targets 50,000 times faster than today’s missiles.
They could reach Earth from a point as far away as the Moon one and a quarter seconds after they had been fired.
It is no coincidence that Chinese state media are talking openly of plans to establish a military base on the Moon’s surface, from which beams could be used to destroy any desired target on Earth or in Earth orbit.
This idea seems certain to represent the long-term future of war.
The Beijing Times, referred to the Death Star from the first Star Wars film of 1977, approvingly in an article a year ago.
The article cited “experts in China” who boasted that “the Moon could be transformed into a deadly weapon.” This particular boast might be an empty one since such a base could be observed during construction and defensive measures taken.
But such a base could be built in secret anywhere else in space. Its destructive power would be limited only by Newton’s inverse square law, in which the strength of a beam must weaken with distance.
One’s thoughts may turn to war when seeing the two brilliant stars Castor and Pollux in the constellation of Gemini the Twins, now overhead and named after military heroes in many ages.
They look like a pair of eyes staring down at Earth. But in fact Castor and Pollux, far from being twins, are utterly different from each other. They are not even in the same system. Castor, at a distance of 50 light-years, is a third again further away than Pollux.
And the two stars themselves are quite opposite in character. Pollux is a solitary red giant dying star with a single Jupiter-sized planet. More distant Castor is a white much younger star. And far from being solitary, it consists of no less than six stars, or rather of three doubles, a rare object indeed in our galaxy.
To the west of Castor lies the yellow star 37 Geminorum, 56 light-years away, which is almost identical to the Sun and with one or more possibly habitable worlds. In 2001, some Ukrainian astronomers sent an “Is Anyone There?” radio message to 37 Geminorum. We might get a reply in 2113.
Another remarkable object in Gemini is the brightly-coloured Eskimo (or Clown) Nebula (NGC 2392) that lies some 3,000 light-years away to the west of Pollux. It is so called because it resembles a man’s head surrounded by a furry hood.
Jupiter, king of the night, rises around midnight in the constellation of Leo the Lion quite close to the bright star Regulus. One great mystery about the giant planet is the case of the ever-dwindling Great Red Spot. A century ago it was as big as three Earths. Now only one. It is a case for a cosmic detective. In the 19th century it was said to be wider than three Earths. Now only one.
At about 5 am on the 19th Saturn will be will be next to the crescent Moon.
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