Early Sunsets in Early December

Starting on Monday, December 3rd, we’ll embark on a ten-day period when sunset arrives around 4:35 in the afternoon, marking the earliest sunsets of the year. Sunsets will commence a little later by Friday, December 21st – Winter Solstice – the day distinguished by the least amount of daylight.
The latest sunrise doesn’t take place until January 10th and then, thoughts and hopes can turn to Spring!
Mars still dominates the Southern sky after sunset, Saturn barely hanging on.
The Moon catches up with bright Venus on Monday morning between 4 a.m. and 6:15 a.m.

November 30th was the 62nd anniversary of the only recorded instance of a human injury caused by a meteor.
It was 1956 when a meteor crashed through the ceiling of a room where Ann Hodges was sitting on a couch in Sylacauga, Alabama. The softball-sized object banged around the room and struck her on her leg, causing a bruise. The biggest related question cosmologists have now is whether it’s possible that microbes beyond earth seeded life here. Panspermia is the idea that there’s life throughout the universe; transpermia is the concept that microbes hitch rides on asteroids and meteoroids traveling throughout the cosmos.