In 2024, the December solstice falls at 9:21 UTC on December 21 (3:21 a.m. CST). Long nights, short days, for the Northern Hemisphere. Short nights, long days, for our friends south of the equator. No matter where you live on Earth’s globe, the solstice is your signal to celebrate seasonal change. EarthSky’s veteran stargazers Deborah … Read more
Friday, December 20Now that the evening sky is Moon-free, it’s time to aim for fainter targets, including 12th-magnitude Comet 333P/LINEAR. Located in far northern Cygnus, close to where that constellation’s border meets those of Cepheus and Draco, LINEAR sits some 8.4° northeast of magnitude 3.8 Kappa (κ) Cygni tonight. The comet is roughly halfway along … Read more
Sundial at Adler Planetarium in Chicago. A sundial can be used to measure the interval from one solar noon to the next. Earth’s longest days, from noon to noon, happen in December. Image via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0). What is a day? You might casually talk about a day as a period of daylight. … Read more
For the latest on Parker Solar Probe, watch the livestream above at 12:15 CST (18:15 UTC) on Friday, December 20, 2024, with EarthSky founder Deborah Byrd and heliophysicist C. Alex Young of NASA Goddard Spaceflight Center, co-author of EarthSky’s daily sun news update. Join us in marveling at a spacecraft that can touch the sun! … Read more
Friday, December 13The bright gibbous Moon passes 4° north of Uranus at 5 A.M. EST. At that time, the Moon sits in Aries the Ram, while Uranus is just over the border in far western Taurus the Bull. The two set together around 5 A.M. local time. You might have better luck spotting the ice … Read more
If Digital Transformation were a ship, the vessel for delivering on our missions and ensuring smooth passage into the future, our final Digital Transformer of 2024 would be the captain. Growing up sailing with her father on the Chesapeake Bay, this transformer developed the navigation skills she now uses at NASA “with both clarity and precision, … Read more
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope captured this stunningly sharp view of Jupiter when the planet was near opposition in 2019. Credit: NASA, ESA, A. Simon (Goddard Space Flight Center) and M.H. Wong (University of California, Berkeley) Friday, December 6 Asteroid 15 Eunomia is making its way through central Auriga this month, passing numerous deep-sky objects along … Read more