The Evening Sky in December 2024
There are two ‘evening stars’ this month on opposite sides of the sky. Venus is the first to appear, due west soon after sunset. It is soon followed by Jupiter in the northeast. Venus sets in the southwest around midnight, a brilliant object in the dark night sky. Jupiter crosses the north sky through the night, setting in the northwest around dawn.
Venus is bright enough to see in daylight if you can get your eyes focused on infinity. On December 5 the Moon will be near Venus. Around 5 pm the pair will be due north of the zenith. Venus will be 3°, six moon widths, below and left of the Moon. Though bright, Venus isn’t of much interest in a telescope. It looks like a featureless Moon just after first quarter.
Saturn is northwest of the zenith at dusk. It sets due west around midnight. It looks like a medium-bright cream-coloured star. The Moon will be very close to Saturn on the 8th. Jupiter and Saturn are good targets for a telescope. Any telescope will show Jupiter’s ‘Galilean’ moons, but not all four every night as they cross in front of and behind Jupiter. A small telescope will show the disk of Saturn. The ring is becoming edge-on so it looks like a spike through the planet.
Sirius is the brightest true star, low in the east, twinkling colourfully. Canopus, the second brightest, is a bit higher in the southeast. Almost overhead is Achernar. Left of Sirius is the constellation of Orion. Bluish Rigel and orange Betelgeuse are Orion’s brightest stars. Between them is the line of three stars making the bottom of 'The Pot' in our southern hemisphere view. A faint line of stars above the bright three is the Pot's handle. At its centre is the Orion Nebula, a glowing gas cloud nicely seen in binoculars.
Left of Orion and just above Jupiter is a triangular group making the upside-down face of Taurus the bull. Orange Aldebaran, at one tip of the V shape, is one eye of Taurus. The stars on and around the V, except for Aldebaran, are the Hyades cluster. Aldebaran is not a member of the cluster but closer and on the line-of-sight. Further left is the Pleiades/Matariki/Subaru cluster, a tight grouping of six naked-eye stars. Many more stars are seen in binoculars.
Low in the south are the Pointers, Beta and Alpha Centauri, and Crux the Southern Cross, upside down at this time of the year. The Milky Way is wrapped around the horizon. The broadest part is in Sagittarius, low in the southwest. It narrows toward Crux in the south and becomes faint in the east below Orion.
The Clouds of Magellan, LMC and SMC, high in the southern sky, are two small galaxies about 160 000 and 200 000 light-years* away, respectively. They are easily seen by eye on a dark moonless night as misty patches of light.
Mars (not on the chart) rises in the northeast around 1 a.m. at the beginning of the month and 11 p.m. at the end. It is a bright orange red ‘star’. We pass Mars next month, so it is nearly at its closest, just under 100 million km away. It is small in a telescope. The Moon will be close to Mars on the morning of the 19th. Mercury (not on the chart) appears in the southeast dawn sky mid-month when it is rising an hour before the Sun. It rises 80 minutes before the Sun at the end of the month. It is the brightest ‘star’ in that part of the sky.
Very low in the north is the Andromeda Galaxy. In binoculars in a dark sky it looks like a spindle of light. It is a bit bigger than our Milky Way Galaxy and nearly three million light-years away.
*A light-year (l.y.) is the distance that light travels in one year: nearly 10 million million km, 10^13 km. Sunlight takes eight minutes to get here; moonlight about one second. Sunlight reaches Neptune, the outermost major planet, in four hours. It takes sunlight four years to reach the nearest star, Alpha Centauri.
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