Sun rises at 6:36am
Sun sets at 5:43pm
Moon phase: New Moon Phase
Moon rises at 12:30am, Sunday
Moon sets at 11:50am, Saturday
Well, the beginning of this week offered a great sky for those who looked up in the night. The stars were bright and clear, and it was Geminid meteor time – a perfect joining of cosmic interplays! At 2:00am on Monday, I happened to be passing through my house in one of the rooms that has no roof and as I glanced up, I beheld the winter circle of brilliant stars shining down on me. As I stared in amazement, just then a meteor shot its streak right through the heart of Orion the Hunter. I took it as a good sign, and for once was happy to have no roof!
This weekend should be comparable star-gazing, although the Geminids are likely finished. But there will be another set started in the middle of the week: the Ursid meteor shower will probably peak on the nights of December 21-22 or 22-23 (though best before dawn on December 22 or 23) but you can see meteors in this shower for several days around the December solstice. As many as 100 meteors per hour have been seen, but only in short bursts. Expect five to 10 meteors per hour. This shower favours the more northerly latitudes in the Northern Hemisphere, and the Ursid meteors tend to be rather slow-moving.
All meteors in annual showers have radiant points on our sky’s dome, and the showers take their names from the constellations in which the radiant points lie. The Little Dipper asterism is in the constellation Ursa Minor the Lesser Bear, hence the Ursid meteor shower. The sky chart on this page shows the Big and Little Dippers around 1:00am when the Big Dipper is well up in the north-northeast.
The Winter Solstice is fast approaching. This is the time of year when the earth is closest to the sun. Yes, you read that correctly, and I typed it correctly. So why isn’t it the hottest time of year? Well, it is if you live in the southern hemisphere, but we experience winter weather, because in the northern hemisphere, there is less sunlight due to the angle of the earth’s tilt away from the sun at this point in our orbit. The tilt of the earth causes the sun’s rays to reach their southernmost point for the year.
The solstice will come on December 21 and it marks the beginning of the winter season in the Northern Hemisphere, and the start of the summer season in the Southern Hemisphere.
Thank you for keeping up with the Night Sky articles. If you are out later on in the week, each star rises about four minutes earlier each day than written here, and the moon rises 50 minutes later. Night Sky is researched and compiled by Lisa Davis-Burnett. Earthsky.org is a key resource for information and images. Questions or comments? Email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
