“Star light, Star bright...
the first star you see at night...” is Jupiter—low in the west.
Check out Jupiter and its moons on January 7th—Galileo did it on January 7, 1610. His determination that those small ‘stars’ near Jupiter were really moons circling Jupiter got him in big trouble. He initially could only see three of the moons but on January 13th he saw the fourth.


Mars is the bright ‘star’ near the Moon on January 2nd and 29th.

Late in the month, Mars is very distinctively red and is the brightest ‘star’ in the east. A telescope reveals the white polar ice cap. The bright star farther to the right of reddish Mars is the brightest star in the sky--Sirius.

Let’s go back to our hump-in-the-bay issue. If you visit One Shoreline, on the street level, notice that the production platform in the bay appears to be ‘sitting’ on the horizon. Then look out of a window from the high floors of the building at the same platform. You will note that the horizon line is now above the production platform. The hump-in-the-bay has moved farther away at your new higher eye height above the ground.

When you are flying at 30,000’ and are looking out of the window at the horizon, you are seeing the curvature of the earth 230 miles away. *

It is wonderful to watch the Moon rise out of Corpus Christi Bay
Friday January 29th 5:49 p.m. waxing Gibbous100%
Saturday January 30th 7:00 p.m. waning Gibbous100% --Full at 12:19am
Sunday January 31st 8:08 p.m. waning gibbous 97% full

Owen Hopkins January 2010

*The distance in miles to the curvature of the Earth is determined by taking the square root of the eye height in feet above the Earth’s surface multiplied by 1.346.