Planets, Winter Stars And Geminid Meteor Showers In December 2024 Skywatching

See Venus, Jupiter, Saturn and Mars this month. Also, see the Winter Stars, Winter Triangle, the Geminid Meteor Shower.   Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Transcript

00:00What's up for December? Venus, Jupiter, and Mars shine brightly. The stars of winter

00:08and their pointy little friend. And meteors meet the Moon.

00:15Starting off with the planets, Venus is hard to miss in the southwest after sunset. It's

00:20that dazzling bright evening star. You'll find it getting a bit higher in the sky each

00:25evening through the month. And on December 4th, look for a slim crescent moon hanging

00:30right below it, making for a great photo opportunity. Saturn is visible toward the south beginning

00:36at nightfall. Look for it to track a bit farther to the west as the weeks go by.

00:41Jupiter, meanwhile, reaches opposition on December 7th, meaning it's at its brightest

00:46for the year and visible all night long. You'll find it rising in the east-northeast as darkness

00:51falls among the stars of the constellation Taurus. Mid-month, around December 14th, watch

00:57for Jupiter sitting between the nearly full Moon and Taurus' brightest star, orange-colored

01:03Aldebaran. Next, Mars will be putting on its own show,

01:07doubling its brightness during December as it heads toward its own opposition in January.

01:12Early in the month, it rises about four hours after dark, but by New Year's Eve, it's

01:17just about 90 minutes after sunset, always shining with its distinctive reddish hue.

01:23And on December 17th, you'll find the red planet super close to the Moon, which will

01:28be just two days past its full Moon phase. The stars of winter are making their grand

01:34entrance in December. As evening falls, you'll see the mighty hunter Orion rising in the

01:40east with Taurus, the bull above it, and the stars of the twins in Gemini to their left.

01:46These constellations host some wonderful sights like the Crab Nebula and the Pleiades

01:51star cluster in Taurus, and the misty Orion Nebula which hangs below Orion's belt.

01:57Now if you look to the western sky soon after dark, you can still spot the three bright

02:02stars of the summer triangle getting quite low on the horizon. But as they depart, three

02:08bright stars of winter bring their own prominent triangular shape to mark the season. Once

02:14you spot Orion's distinctive belt of three stars, you're well on your way to finding

02:18what we call the Winter Triangle. Just follow the belt stars to the left and slightly downward.

02:25They point right to Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky. Then look upward and

02:30to the left of Sirius to spot Procyon, and back up toward Orion to find the reddish Betelgeuse

02:35at its shoulder. These three bright stars form an equilateral triangle that's visible

02:41throughout the season. The Geminid meteor shower peaks after midnight

02:46in the early morning of December 14th, and they're usually one of the best meteor showers

02:51of the year under good conditions. This year, the nearly full moon will wash out the fainter

02:56meteors on the peak night. Still, the Geminids are known for bright meteors, and it's common

03:01to spot their shooting stars up to a week before the peak. So if you're up before dawn

03:06that week, it's worth looking up just in case you spot a speck of dust from space streaking

03:12through the morning sky. And here are the phases of the moon for December.

03:19Stay up to date on all of NASA's missions exploring the solar system and beyond at science.nasa.gov.

03:24I'm Preston Dyches from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and that's what's up for this

03:29month.

03:30NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology