We’re getting close to the holiday season, but please stop and admire the beauty of the skies.

Mercury is still in good position in the mornings this week, rising an hour and a half before the Sun.  Venus, however, is too deep in twilight to be enjoyed, unless you have a perfect east-southeastern horizon.  

The evenings are still very good, with Saturn high in the south-southeast at sunset, and with us until midnight.  Jupiter rises with the winter group of constellations, as it is in Gemini, the Twins.  For those wanting to capture Jupiter’s four major - Galilean - moons, an almanac should give you lots of terrific observations this week.  Mars is still in the glare of the Sun at sunset, and won’t be visible to us until next year.

The Moon, which is within Leo, the Lion early this week, is within just .2 degrees of the animal’s heart, the star Regulus, on the morning of the 10th.  The next night it will become last quarter.  On the 14th, look for the waning crescent 2 degrees southwest of Spica, the sheaf of wheat held in the hand of Virgo, the Handmaiden.  

What we normally consider the best of the meteor showers, the Geminids, peaks this week.  The shooting stars could be up to over 50 per hour.  Also, as the radiant point, where the meteors appear to originate, is up all night, you don’t have to stay up till all hours to get a great view.  

And, yes, we’re still looking out for the star T in Corona Borealis to become as bright as our North Star, Polaris, but only for a few nights; therefore, keep watching for it in the morning sky.

One of the more famous objects within the constellation Taurus, the Bull, in addition to the Pleiades open star cluster, is a nebula, a giant pile of dust and gas, called M1 or the Crab nebula.  Originally documented by Charles Messier, who first mistook it for a comet (believed to be a return of Halley’s Comet) he began his catalog of “noncomets” with this object.  Its location conforms to a very bright supernova occurrence witnessed by several civilizations almost a thousand years ago.  It received its “crab” name in the early 1840s by the 3rd Earl of Rosse, William Parsons, who, through his 36-inch telescope, said it looked like a crab with arms.   We now know it is home to a pulsar, which rotates over 30 times per second.  Although it is not a naked eye object, it can be found with a small telescope near the southern horn of the Bull, only about 1 degree northwest of the star Zeta Tauri.  Let us know if you are able to find it.

Although we usually mention Galileo and his incredible telescopic observations, he wasn’t the only person using this new invention.   Simon Marius, in his early 20s, joined Tycho Brahe’s staff in 1601.  In 1608 he learned of the new tool the telescope, and proceeded to make one.  It is said he might even have seen the moons of Jupiter before Galileo; however, his major discovery was in the constellation Andromeda, the Princess, where he independently located what he called the “Nebula in the Girdle of Andromeda,” what we now call the Andromeda Galaxy, or M31.  He described it as looking like a “flame seen through horn,” as seen with what at the time was considered a fairly moderate telescope.  He is credited with being the first to telescopically observe this important member of our neighborhood.

We have been hearing a fair amount of talk lately about comets and their close approaches to us, although they aren’t coming anywhere near us.  But, occasionally, one will venture fairly close, such as one that was first observed in March of 1772 by Jacques Leibax Montaigne.  It came within 57 million miles away.  On November 10, 1802 it again returned, but this time, on December 9, 1805, it came within 3.7 million miles, one of the closest known comets to us.  Now called Comet Biela, after its third discoverer in 1826, it has never come as close to us again, nor have any other comets - yet..

Today we know that our beautiful ringed planet Saturn has hundreds of moons, but many of them have been found by visiting space crafts.  To find them from here on Earth has been a much more tedious process.  For example, it wasn’t until December 15, 1966 that Saturn’s 10th known satellite was discovered.  On that date, Audouin Dollfus discovered a potato-shaped moon he called Janus.  It is a 55-mile long oblong rock that has several fairly large craters covering its surface.  Not long after this discovery, on December 18, another object was found orbiting in the same path.  Now called Epimetheus, the two share one orbit.

For those of us who can recall it, can you believe the anniversary of the last astronauts to leave the surface of the Moon occurred this week.  On December 14, 1972, Apollo 17, carrying Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmidt, returned to the Command Module to rendezvous with Ronald Evans and come home, splashing down December 19th.  Although many of us alive then were hoping this was not the end, but the beginning of more opportunities of lunar travel, we are just now beginning, with the future launch of the Artemis II mission, to slowly return to our neighbor.  At this writing, the first launch, to fly by the Moon, with astronauts onboard, is tentatively scheduled for early 2026. 

The winter sky is quickly coming on us, the constellations of which are often believed to be the most beautiful.  Please stop and watch them rise with each passing evening.