The Night Sky This Month

Northern HemisphereIan Morison tells us what we can see in the Northern Hemisphere night sky during December 2018.The PlanetsJupiter - Jupiter passed behind the Sun on November 26th and will appear low in the eastern pre-dawn sky around the 12th of the month. It will have a magnitude of ~-1.8 and a disk ~32 arc seconds across. It is not a good month to observe Jupiter due to its low elevation, but do see the 'highlight' above.Saturn - Saturn might just be glimpsed in the first few days of December very low in the southwest around 16:45 but soon disappears into the Sun's glare as it moves towards superior conjunction on January 2nd. It will have a disk of ~15 arc seconds and a magnitude of +0.5.Mercury - Mercury passed between us and the Sun (inferior conjunction) on the 27th of November but appears in the pre-dawn sky around the 6th of the month. It will then have a magnitude of +0.5 which increases to magnitude 0 by the 8th. Mercury reaches its greatest elongation (west) of the Sun on the 16th, when 21 deg