Tonight's Sky: December
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Brave chilly nights to catch January’s views of the Hyades, the Pleiades, Capella, and Aldebaran! You can also catch the Quadrantids meteor shower. Watch “Tonight’s Sky” to learn about this month’s constellations—and stick around for a space-based view of the Crab Nebula.
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
- Starfield images created with Stellarium.
- Mythological constellations from Firmamentium Sobiescanium sive Uranographilia by Johannes Hevelius, courtesy of the United States Naval Observatory.
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Text, January, tonight's sky. Constellations. Stylized drawings of a lion, a ram and a bull.
Text, January, tonight's sky. Constellations. Stylized drawings of a lion, a ram and a bull.
South, 11 PM. Looking up into a night sky filled with stars. Text, the winter sky is filled with brilliant stars. Orion. A constellation forming the shape of a man's body with one arm raised up holding a club and the other arm outstretched holding a shield. Three stars in a row form his belt. A drawing of the helmeted man appears over the constellation. Text, Orion the hunter is the centerpiece, striding into the night sky with a belt of three stars.
A constellation shaped like an irregular boxy five-sided shape. Text, Above Orion lies a five-sided figure that forms Auriga, the charioteer, who was associated with goats. A drawing of a man with a long feather in his hat who is carrying a goat on his back appears over the constellation. Text, Its brightest star is Capella, which is actually a pair of giant yellow stars.
Auriga balances on a horn of Taurus the bull. A constellation with two long prongs above a small triangle, an angular body with two prongs emerging below. A drawing of a bull appears over the constellation, the prongs forming its horns and front legs. Text, In Greek mythology Taurus was seen as the god Zeus in disguise. His eyes are orange Aldebaran, a red giant star nearing the end of its life. A number of the stars that form the bull's V-shaped head are part of a star cluster called the Hyades.
The bull's shoulder is marked by the distinctive Pleiades star cluster also called the Seven Sisters.
An image of a dim cluster of stars. Text, ground-based view. The cluster contains more than 250 stars, but only six or seven are visible to the naked eye.
Zoom in on Pleiades, a cluster of brilliant white stars shining amidst sparse blue clouds. Text, Palomar observatory. This view of Pleiades from the Palomar Observatory shows the brightest stars surrounded by a dusty cloud. The dust reflects the blue light of these hot stars.
At the tip of Taurus's horn lies the Crab Nebula. The Crab is the remains of a star that exploded as a supernova observed by Chinese, Japanese, and Arab astronomers in 1054.
Zoom in on the Crab Nebula, appearing as a red bloom of cloudy dust. Text, Radio VLA. Telescopes on the ground and in space have observed different forms of light given off by the Crab Nebula. The Crab Nebula, appearing as yellowish cloudy light, infrared, Spitzer. As spidery green light, visible, Hubble. As starry purple cloud light, ultraviolet, XMM Newton. As sharper brighter purple, X-ray, Chandra. As a brilliant reddish purple cloud with a bright center and stars in the background, spidery green lines throughout. Composite image. Different wavelengths of visible and invisible light reveal details of the supernova remnant. Combining information from different wavelengths helps us better understand the expanding cloud of glowing gas and the spinning neutron star that remains at its core.
Celestial wonders await you in Tonight's Sky.