Leap second to happen today.

[Jehanne]

Also, Mars & Neptune will be very close in tonight's sky:



http://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy...-years-eve

A 10x50 pair of binoculars should bag Neptune.  I own a 15x70 pair, but they are hard to hold steady by hand; well worth the investment, though.

A pair of image stabilized 15X50 binoculars are well worth it.  They are price, and the objectives are not as large as you can get with normal binoculars, but the stabilized image when you want it is priceless.

These butties are my favorite (if my wife lets me buy them someday!):

https://www.amazon.com/Celestron-SkyMast...B00008Y0VU


As they get down to around 12 magnitude, you can observe 5,304,685 / 2 (or, about 2.6 million) stars with them!

http://www.stargazing.net/david/constel/...stars.html