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Strange Universe: Best Meteors Of The Year! 12/11/22

Tuesday night, December 13, we’ll see the year’s finest meteor shower. These are the Geminids, and they deliver a meteor a minute. And you start seeing them as early as 8 p.m. No need to wait for midnight like with those other rich showers. And the Moon will be absent, giving us perfect dark skies if you’re away from cities and artificial lights.

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  • This is the week of Mars. Its opposition – when it’s exactly the opposite the sun in our sky – is this Thursday. Its closest and brightest happened a few days ago. And this Wednesday night, December 7th, it closely meets the Full Moon. We’ll also hear what Mars has been up to.
  • Everyone knows the terms waxing and waning, and usually know a waxing Moon gets fatter each night while a waning Moon gets thinner. But relatively few of your friends could look at a moon and instantly tell whether it’s a waxing or a waning one. So let's make it easy. The waxing moon is lit up on the right. It's the moon you see during the weeks before full moon. It's also the moon that's already out when darkness falls, so it's the one seen by the most people. The dinnertime moon.