Tonight's Sky: December

Produced by the Space Telescope Science Institute’s Office of Public Outreach in collaboration with NASA’s Universe of Learning partners: Caltech/IPAC, Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and Sonoma State University.

Musical track The Far River written by John Serrie, from the album And the Stars Go With You, courtesy of New World Music, Ltd. 

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 Text, December. Tonight's sky. Constellations. Stylized drawings of a lion, a ram, and a bull. 

East, 11 PM. Looking into a night sky filled with stars. Text, The long, frosty nights of December make for good sky gazing when the stars shine clear and bright. Face north to find the Big Dipper scraping the northern horizon. A constellation of stars forming a rectangular dipping ladle with a long handle. Text, the constellation of Cassiopeia the Queen swings high on the other side of Polaris, the north star. It is shaped like a crooked W. Between the Big Dipper and Cassiopeia, the star Polaris shines bright. An image of a woman on a throne appears over the Cassiopeia constellation. Text, The Queen's star pattern forms a clear "W" or "M" shape in the sky. Snuggled in the M pattern is Eta Cassiopeiae, a binary with a pale yellow Sun-sized star and a less massive orange companion. Ground-based view. An image of two bright stars, one large and one small, that appear to be touching. Text, also tucked within the "M" pattern is the open star cluster M103. Ground-based view, a cluster of bright blue, white, and orange stars. Text, Binoculars or a small telescope show a fan-shaped group of about 170 stars, with a red giant star near the center. To the east of Cassiopeia lies the fainter constellation of Cepheus, the king. A constellation made of a triangle on top of a square. A drawing of a man with an elaborate turban and scepter appears. Text, His dim shape looks like the outline of a house. Along the base of the house lies Mu Cephei, a red giant also known as the Garnet Star for its deep red color. It's also a variable star, changing in brightness over hundreds or thousands of days. To one side of the house's base sits NGC 6946, a ragged spiral galaxy that appears as a ghostly patch of light in modest telescopes. An image of a dim spiral-shaped galaxy. Zoom in on NGC 6946, bright purple and gray clouds swirling around a shining central point with blue and white stars scattered across it. Text, Chandra X-ray and Gemini observatories ultraviolet and optical light. NGC 946 is known as the Fireworks Galaxy because of the frequency of supernovas occurring within it. Ten within the past century. By comparison, the larger Milky Way averages just two per century. X-ray emissions, shown in purple, reveal a galaxy filled with remnants of supernovas whose energy contributes to heating surrounding gas. To the west of Cassiopeia, we find the sprawling pattern of Perseus, the Greek hero and slayer of Medusa, whose head he carries. A constellation of two-pronged branching arcs pointing up from a vertical line. A drawing of a muscular man holding the head of a woman with snake hair. Text, Among Perseus' stars lies the open star cluster M34. Ground-based view of a dim scattering of stars. Text, Small telescopes or binoculars show a concentrated scatter of about 100 stars. 

Face north to locate the Big Dipper and find galaxy M82. The Big Dipper with additional constellation lines protruding to form a head and legs. A drawing of a bear appears over it. Text, Ursa Major. Image of a narrow disk-shaped galaxy. In binoculars and small telescopes, the galaxy appears as a thin rod of light. Zoom in on M82, a misty-green streak with a butterfly-shaped cloud of blue, edged in deep red expanding across. Text, Spitzer, Hubble and Chandra space telescopes infrared, optical, and X-ray light. M82, seen edge on, experienced a tremendous burst of star formation after an encounter with another galaxy. This multi-wavelength image shows the effects of this starburst as it blows out dust shown in red and hot gas, shown in blue from its central regions. Face the east to find Orion the Hunter with his shining belt rising over the early winter landscape. A constellation forming the shape of a man with one arm raised, holding a club and the other outstretched, holding a shield. A drawing of a helmeted man appears. Text, The glittering stars of winter rise with Orion and promise many fine stargazing nights to come. Celestial wonders await you in Tonight's Sky.