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What's Up - December 2017

What’s Up For December? Geminid and Ursid meteor showers & winter constellations!

This month hosts the best meteor shower of the year and the brightest stars in familiar constellations.

The Geminds peak on the morning of the 14th, and are active from December 4th through the 17th. The peak lasts for a full 24 hours, meaning more worldwide meteor watchers will get to see this spectacle.

Expect to see  up to 120 meteors per hour between midnight and 4 a.m. but only from a dark sky. You’ll see fewer after moonrise at 3:30 a.m. local time.

In the southern hemisphere, you won’t see as many, perhaps 10-20 per hour, because the radiant never rises above the horizon.

Take a moment to enjoy the circle of constellations and their brightest stars around Gemini this month.

Find yellow Capella in the constellation Auriga. 

Next-going clockwise–at 1 o'clock find Taurus and bright reddish Aldebaran, plus the Pleiades. 

At two, familiar Orion, with red Betelguese, blue-white Rigel, and the three famous belt stars in-between the two.   

Next comes Leo, and its white lionhearted star, Regulus at 7 o'clock.

Another familiar constellation Ursa Major completes the view at 9 o'clock.

There’s a second meteor shower in December, the Ursids, radiating from Ursa Minor, the Little Dipper. If December 22nd  and the morning of December 23rd are clear where you are, have a look at the Little Dipper’s bowl, and you might see about ten meteors per hour. Watch the full What’s Up for December Video: 

There are so many sights to see in the sky. To stay informed, subscribe to our What’s Up video series on Facebook. Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com.   

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope captures the iridescent tapestry of star birth in a neighbouring galaxy in this panoramic view of glowing gas, dark dust clouds, and young, hot stars.

Credit: NASA/ESA and the Hubble Heritage Team (AURA/STScI/HEIC)

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Waiting for autumn leaves to start falling down again.  🍁

gateway to autumn (via All sizes | Gate to Autumn | Flickr - Photo Sharing!)

Autumn Path by AnthonyPresley

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This artist’s impression shows the disc of gas and cosmic dust around the young star HD 142527. Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) telescope have seen vast streams of gas flowing across the gap in the disc. These are the first direct observations of these streams, which are expected to be created by giant planets guzzling gas as they grow, and which are a key stage in the birth of giant planets.

Credit: ESO / Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array

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Saturn - March 11 2006

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/CCI/CICLOPS/Kevin M. Gill

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Research alert! Two new fossils of a mouse-sized animal from the age of dinosaurs indicate that early mammals grew more slowly and lived longer than their modern descendants—rewriting our understanding of the lives of the very earliest mammals. An international study led by researchers at National Museums Scotland and published today in the journal Nature, compares two Krusatodon kirtlingtonensis fossils discovered decades apart in Scotland’s Isle of Skye. One of the fossils, the only juvenile Jurassic mammal skeleton known to science, was discovered in 2016 by Roger Benson, the Museum’s Macaulay Curator in the Division of Paleontology, and colleagues.

“These fossils are among the most complete mammals from this time period in the world,” said Elsa Panciroli, the lead author of the study and an associate researcher of paleobiology at National Museums Scotland. 

Learn how these small animals give us unprecedented insights into the lives of early mammals.

Image: © Maija Karala