Astrophiz163: HolidaySkyHunting

Many cultures around the world and throughout history have staged festivals events and celebrations around this time. Here in Australia our summer holidays occur now and with Christmas and New Years Eve approaching it’s a great time to spend time with family and friends. As I’ve been reminded by our resident observation guru Dr Ian Musgrave, this is a great time of year to see some great planetary action and some special stars and introduce younger family members to the splendour of the night sky. There’s a lot to see over the next week, even with naked eyes, but if you have binoculars even better, and a telescope better still. Many households will have a pair of binoculars somewhere and I’d encourage you to go and find them, and while there is an 8 dollar adapter available from online stores that will easily attach your binocs to a tripod, a great idea is to use gaffer tape or duct tape to attach your binocs to a broom handle or your tripod. Why? Doing this reduces arm fatigue remarkably and will hold your binoculars much steadier so you can easily have a good long look at things like craters on the moon and Jupiter and its 4 Galilean moons. So what I’ve done here is have a look at the free Stellarium website that let’s you look forward in time and see exactly what is visible in the sky from whatever your location on earth, and I’ve also checked out Ian’s Southern Skywatch December predictions and his weekly ‘Astrobloggger’ website. Both of these great sites come up first in the search engines. So on NYE 31st of December we have a 65% moon which will be quite bright but will not spoil a magnificent line of objects along the ecliptic and this time I’ll sweep from west to east and see Saturn, Jupiter, Moon, the Piades, Mars, then Aldaberan, the red eye of Taurus the bull, above orange Mars and further to the right is Orion with red Betelgeuse sitting on Orion’s shoulder, then to finish our tour, higher up in the East is the magnificent of Sirius, the brightest star in our skies, held firmly in the jaws of Canis Major, the Big Dog, the fastest Dog in the world. So that’s it from us at Astrophiz for 2022, I hope you had a great year with us and we’ll be back again in 20923 after out traditionally Australian long summer break, but with luck I’ll be able to post some observation tips during our holidays. And remember, Astrophiz is free and ad-free and for observers who like the print version, Dr Ian Musgrave’s Astroblog and Southern Skywatch websites are always there to let you know what to look for in the coming weeks. Till next time …. it’;s a big sky up there …. keep looking up. See ya!