Starry Night This Week
Each week most PBS stations air "Jack
Horkheimer: Star Gazer", the world's first and only weekly TV series
on naked-eye astronomy. The Starry Night images on this page illustrate
the show for the week of Monday, December 17, 2001. You can
view the complete show script, or watch
a RealPlayer video of the show.
The First Day Of Winter and Why The Shortest Day Of The Year Doesn't Feel Like The Shortest
The winter solstice occurs when the sun passes through a specific point in the sky, in the constellation Sagittarius. This happens on Dec. 21 or Dec. 22 each year.
The winter solstice is the shortest day of the year in the Northern hemisphere. The sun charts a very shallow path across the southern horizon.