THIS MONTH IN SPACE: December

• ASTRONOMY PICTURE OF THE DAY: Every day a different image.

• SUN: An ANNULAR ECLIPSE will take place between 2:47 and 4:51 p.m. on December 14. Maximum eclipse will be at 3:53 p.m.
• MOON: last Full Moon was on December 1. New Moon (end of Ramadan in Islamic countries) on December 14. Next Full Moon is on December 30.
• MERCURY: not visible.
• VENUS: Morning Star; rises about 6:00 a.m.
• MARS: visible in the south in evening; sets before 12:00 p.m.
• JUPITER: rises about 7:00 p.m. Nearby are the Twins (Castor and Pollux in Gemini).
• SATURN: rises about 5:00 p.m. The nearby bright shimmering red star is Aldebaran, the eye of Taurus the Bull. On December 1, Saturn was occulted (eclipsed) by the full moon, an unusual event -- but there will be another occultation of Saturn on December 28.
• COMET LINEAR will perhaps become visible to the naked eye this month.
• The GEMINID METEOR SHOWER will peak on the night of December 13-14.

• GLEB LOZINO-LOZINSKY has died at the age of 91. He was the designer of the old Soviet Union's equivalent of the Space Shuttle, the Buran, which had flown only one mission when the country collapsed and has never been re-used since.
• CHINA has announced its intention of putting a human in space by the year 2005, and then proceeding to the Moon.
• Russia put three new "HURRICANE" SATELLITES (equivalent to US Navstar Global Positioning satellites) into orbit on December 1.
• A PROGRESS M-17 freighter has had numerous problems while docking at Space Station Alpha, causing delays in the scheduled launch of the Space Shuttle ENDEAVOUR. The Shuttle is now set to leave on December 4, amid extraordinary security precautions including an escort of fighter planes.

• The ATMOSPHERE OF AN EXTRASOLAR PLANET has been observed for the first time. The planet is a "hot Jupiter" (a Jupiter-sized planet in an inner-planet type orbit) going around the star HD209458 in Pegasus, 150 lightyears from Earth.