• You'll find the moon after midnight and before dawn now. If you look carefully, you might also see the moon in a blue daytime sky during the morning hours, but in the coming days, the moon

will become harder to see as it draws closer to the sun on the sky's dome. But something exciting is about to happen

in the east before dawn. Before dawn on Sunday, December 9, the moon will meet up with Spica, the brightest star in the constellation Virgo the Maiden. Day after day after that, you'll be able to watch as the waning crescent moon slides along the line of stars and planets in the eastern predawn sky. They'll be a beautiful sight from around the world.
• Our chart at top can help you visualize it. It shows the sky for Sunday morning - December 9, 2012 - roughly one-and-a-half hours before sunrise at mid-northern latitudes. The planet Mercury rises above an unobstructed horizon just as the predawn darkness gives way to dawn. If you have difficulty spotting Mercury, try drawing an imaginary line from Saturn through Venus to see this star-like light near the sunrise point on the horizon. This imaginary line is the ecliptic, which, after all, represents the plane of our solar system.
• As the Earth turns, the moon rises first on both Saturday and Sunday. Then Spica rises. Both are up in the wee hours before dawn. Then Saturn rises, then Zubenelgenubi, and then Venus. Mercury rises last, perhaps an hour or so after Venus does. If you're not up until late dawn, you'll probably only see the moon and Venus, the brightest and second-brightest orbs of nighttime.
• Watch the moon for the next several days, as it parades down the celestial staircase of the ecliptic in the morning sky. The moon couples up with Saturn on Monday, December 10, then with Venus on Tuesday, December 11 and finally with Mercury on Wednesday, December 12.
• After that, the moon will drop out of the predawn sky, having moved closer to the

(Continued on page 19)