Stargazing for Beginners - December

December also has two meteor showers. The Geminid meteor shower peaks this year on the morning of December 13/14, which is a Saturday night. Unfortunately, the moon will have risen early, and will only be a few days past full, so the light from it will almost certainly wash out all but the brightest meteors. Gemini, the constellation from which the meteors seem to originate, rises early in the evening, and you can usually see meteors from this shower before midnight. They are also a lovely color, bluish green, and often leave trails.

The Ursid meteor shower peaks on the night of December 22. The Ursids are a highly variable shower, producing from 10 to 50 meteors an hour. The radiant of the shower, or where it seems to originate from, is between the constellations Ursa Major and Ursa Minor, better known as the Big and Little Dipper. Meteor showers aren't hard to watch- just sit in a lawn chair or lie on a blanket, and observe the radiant area. From a dark location, away from a city, you will be able to see more meteors, but the bright ones still show up even in areas with light pollution. See my web sites page for a link to information about December's meteor showers, and more tips on watching them.

Constellations to look for early this month are Pegasus, Andromeda, Cassiopeia, Auriga and Perseus. These constellations are the autumn ones, and are high overhead when night falls at the beginning of December. Objects to find in these constellations are the Andromeda galaxy in Andromeda, the Great Square asterism in Pegasus, and the Double Cluster, which is a pair of closely packed star clusters, in Perseus. These objects are marked on a star map or planisphere. Once you find them there, use stars to star-hop around the constellation until you locate them in the sky. Star hopping is a fast way to find faint objects; you find the nearest star to what you are looking for, and use it to "hop" to the object.

Later in the month, look for the constellations Taurus and Orion. Both of these constellations are packed with beautiful stars and deep space objects. They are rising in the east around 8 p.m. at the beginning of the month; by the end of December, they are much higher in the southeastern sky. Taurus contains the Pleiades, also known as the Seven Sisters,

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