What's Up? December 2024

Ho Ho Ho! The festive season is already upon us! How has this happened again. Blink and the year is practically gone! In this edition of What’s Up, we’re going to be showing you all the interesting objects in the night sky you can look at during the month of December, taking you through to the New Year.

Festive Constellations

During the holidays hopefully you’ll have more time to look outside and see our old favourites again.

At this time of year, the hunter Orion, is well and truly back in our skies!

Orion is one of the most recognizable constellations across the world. In Greek mythology, Orion is known as a hunter, holding a shield in one hand and a sword in the other. In the northern hemisphere, his appearance signals the arrival of colder weather.

If you take the belt of Orion (which are the three stars in the middle) and follow them towards the right, it leads you to a very bright amber star by the name of Aldebaran. It is known as the eye of the bull, as it’s situated within the constellation of Taurus. The star is a red giant, which causes it’s gorgeous golden colour. This means it’s running out of fuel in the core of our star, and therefore is much cooler and redder than our Sun.

To the right of Aldebaran, but still within Taurus, is another famous object in the night sky, the Pleiades. They are also known as the seven sisters, as you can count about 7 stars located together in a small cluster. This cluster looks like a little fuzzy patch, but go somewhere dark and let you eyes adjust, you should be able to count them all. Look though a pair of binoculars or telescope, and you can see many more stars within the cluster!

Festive Constellations

Image: Winter Sky at Kielder Observatory showing Orion, Aldebaran and the Pleiades

Object of the month: The Double Cluster in Perseus

Double Cluster

Image: The Double Cluster in Perseus. Credit: Roth Ritter, Dark Atmospheres Astrophotography

The deep sky object in this month's What’s Up is one of our favourites here at the observatory. It is best seen with a pair of binoculars or a small telescope.

If you find the constellation of Cassiopeia, towards the bottom left of the “W” is Perseus, the hero who saved her daughter. Just in between these two constellations are a double cluster of stars creatively named “The Double Cluster in Perseus”. This is probably the best time of year to see the double Cluster in Perseus with the naked eye as it’s very high up. It will look like a faint fuzzy patch.

This fuzzy smudge in the sky has been seen for millennia on dark nights. The Greeks noted a “light” in Perseus in around 150 BCE. However, it wasn’t until the invention of the telescope that we discovered it’s actually two groups of stars that appear to be side by side. If you have a small telescope or binoculars at home, this is a great object to try and spot. Both clusters sit around 7500 light years away (about 400ly away from each other) and are only 13 million years old, which is very, very young for stars! The cluster is dominated by a few hundred baby stars shining a bright blue, however there are already one or two stars growing a few metaphorical grey hairs and turning orange.

Meteor Showers!

December Meteor shower

Image: Geminid Shower at Sycamore Gap. Credit: Dan Monk

The Geminid Meteor shower is back! This is one of the most active and beautiful meteor showers of the year. At its peak and can rain up to 100 shooting stars an hour! The whole shower will be active from the 5^th and 20^th of December, but the peak will be on the 13^th/14^th of December. Sadly, this year that falls right about when the full moon is here. The full moon provides a lot of light pollution so we might not see tons of shooting stars, but we should still see a few. They will be radiating from the constellation Gemini but you will see them across the whole sky.

We have one more meteor shower this month called the Ursid meteor shower! This is a relatively lower active meteor shower but we should hopefully still see some shooting stars. This year it also falls at a time when there’s less than a half moon and it won’t be rising until about 2am. The peak of the Ursids is on the 23^rd of December, so fingers crossed for clear skies!

Winter Solstice

The shortest day of the year (in the Northern Hemisphere) is on the 21^st of December. There will only be around 7 hours and 40 minutes of daylight in Northumberland! The reason it’s the shortest day is because the Earth’s North Pole is being tilted the farthest away from the Sun, and the Sun’s rays are shining on the Southern Hemisphere.

Winter Solstice

Image: The tilted Earth orbiting the Sun causes solstices. Credit: timeanddate.com

The word “solstice” is named after the Latin words “sol” and “sister”, which mean “sun” and “to stand”. Referring to the way the Sun appears to stand still and then slowly return to either the north or south.

Around the world different cultures have many different ways they celebrate this time of year. The Pagan celebration of Yule dates back millennia. Many modern Christian traditions originate from Celtic and Druid customs for the winter solstice, such as decorating with evergreen plants like holly, ivy and mistletoe, burning yule logs and making wreaths.

In China, people celebrate with food which symbolises reunion and harmony - dumplings and rice flour balls. In Japan they celebrate by taking a hot citrus bath for healing and good luck!

Some Middle Eastern communities celebrate the winter solstice as “Yalda Night”. It involves families coming together to eat, recite poetry, and serve foods that symbolise abundance, such as pomegranates.

In the UK people still gather at the ancient Stonehenge for a druid and pagan ceremony. Some stay all night with food, blankets and instruments, playing music and telling stories.

Stonehenge