Geminid Meteors, Asteroid Vesta, Planets And Moon - December Skywatching
The Geminid meteor shower and asteroid Vesta are skywatching highlights in December 2023.
Also, Venus, Saturn and moon 'dance' in the night sky. Night sky:
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Also, Venus, Saturn and moon 'dance' in the night sky. Night sky:
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
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TechTranscript
00:00 What's Up for December?
00:04 The best views of the Moon and planets, the Geminid meteors are set for a great show,
00:10 and a chance to observe an asteroid with your own eyes.
00:14 The Moon visits the bright planets in the sky in turn over the course of the month,
00:18 beginning with four mornings in early December, the 7th through the 10th, when you can catch
00:22 a lovely grouping of Venus, the Crescent Moon, and bright star Spica in the southeast.
00:28 Then on the 17th, you'll find the Crescent Moon hanging just below Saturn in the southwest
00:32 for the first few hours after sunset.
00:35 Most binoculars will reveal both of them in the same field of view.
00:39 And for a challenge, see if you can spot Saturn's giant moon, Titan, as a faint dot just off
00:44 to the planet's side here.
00:46 Later that week, the nearly full Moon hangs out with Jupiter over two nights on the 21st
00:51 and 22nd.
00:52 You'll see them toward the southeast early in the night, and they travel westward across
00:56 the sky together all night long.
01:00 The year's most reliable meteor shower, the Geminids, take place annually in December.
01:05 While the Perseids tend to get a bit more attention because they occur during warmer
01:09 weather in the Northern Hemisphere, the Geminids usually produce more meteors.
01:14 At their peak, you may even see a meteor every minute.
01:18 The shower peaks overnight on December 13th and the morning of the 14th.
01:22 Viewers in the Northern Hemisphere can look for meteors as early as 9 or 10 p.m. on the
01:26 13th.
01:28 The hourly number of meteors should increase after that, with the greatest number flashing
01:32 through the sky between midnight and morning twilight.
01:35 Southern Hemisphere skywatchers can also see the Geminids, though they appear in the middle
01:39 of the night and at about a quarter of the northern rate.
01:42 If you have clear skies, conditions should be ideal for this year's peak night, which
01:46 is just one day after the new Moon, leaving the sky nice and dark all night.
01:51 The meteors appear to radiate from the constellation Gemini, but you'll see more shooting stars
01:56 if you'll take in as much of the sky as possible.
02:06 Want to see an asteroid with your own eyes?
02:09 Asteroid Vesta reaches opposition this month, meaning it's located directly on the opposite
02:13 side of Earth from the Sun.
02:15 This is also around the time Vesta is closest to Earth, so it's at its brightest and easiest
02:20 to observe.
02:21 Occasionally, Vesta is close enough to Earth at opposition that you can almost see it with
02:25 your eyes alone, but this year you'll want to use binoculars or a small telescope to
02:30 search it out.
02:32 NASA's Dawn spacecraft got super close to Vesta, orbiting the oval-shaped world in 2011
02:37 and 2012.
02:39 It found that Vesta formed in our solar system's first couple of million years and mapped the
02:44 surface in great detail.
02:46 This December, Vesta is highest overhead around 1 or 2 in the morning, which is ideal for
02:50 telescope viewing, but you can observe it as early as about 10 p.m. when it will appear
02:54 about halfway up the eastern sky.
02:57 Locate Vesta in between the raised arm of Orion here and the leg of Castor in Gemini
03:02 here.
03:04 On December 1, you can find Vesta along a line between Betelgeuse and this star, Tejai.
03:10 A week later, Vesta has moved so that it appears along this line between Betelgeuse and Propus
03:15 here.
03:16 A plain old pair of binoculars should reveal Vesta a couple of finger widths to the west
03:21 of these two stars.
03:23 Use your favorite sky-watching app as a guide to Vesta's location within the star field
03:27 you see on whatever night you're observing.
03:29 And if you're hungry for more asteroid exploration, there's more on the way.
03:34 NASA's Psyche mission recently launched on its journey to metal-rich asteroid Psyche,
03:39 and our Lucy spacecraft just flew past asteroid Dinkinesh with its little satellite asteroids
03:45 at the start of November.
03:47 Lucy is heading for the Trojan asteroids, a unique family of space rocks that share
03:52 Jupiter's orbit and are likely to be remnants of the same primordial material that formed
03:57 Jupiter and the other outer planets.
03:58 And if that sounds interesting to you, maybe you're ready to add Asteroid Observer to your
04:03 list of accomplishments as you look for Vesta in the December sky.
04:08 Here are the phases of the Moon for December.
04:13 Stay up to date on NASA's missions exploring the solar system and beyond at science.nasa.gov.
04:18 I'm Preston Dyches from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and that's What's Up for this
04:23 month.
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