December 2023 Skywatching Tips

December 3, 2023

This month the night sky offers great views of the Moon and planets, the Geminid meteor shower, and a chance to observe an asteroid with your own eyes. The Moon visits the bright planets in the sky, in turn, over the course of the month, beginning with four mornings in early December – the 7th through the 10th – when you can catch a lovely grouping of Venus, the crescent Moon, and bright star Spica in the southeast. Then on the 17th, you'll find the crescent Moon hanging just below Saturn in the southwest for the first few hours after sunset. Most binoculars will reveal both of them in the same field of view. And for a challenge, see if you can spot Saturn's giant moon Titan as a faint dot just off to the planet's side here. Later that week, the nearly full moon hangs out with Jupiter over two nights on the 21st and 22nd. You'll see them toward the southeast early in the night, and they travel westward across the sky together all night long.

The year's most reliable meteor shower, the Geminids, takes place annually in December. While the Perseids tend to get a bit more attention because they occur during warmer weather in the Northern Hemisphere, the Geminids usually produce more meteors. At their peak, you may even see a meteor every minute. The shower peaks overnight on December 13 and the morning of the 14th. Viewers in the Northern Hemisphere can look for meteors as early as 9 or 10 p.m. on the 13th. The hourly number of meteors should increase after that, with the greatest number flashing through the sky between midnight and morning twilight.

All month long, the asteroid Vesta is highest overhead around 1 or 2 in the morning (which is ideal for telescope viewing), but you can observe it as early as about 10pm, when it will appear about halfway up the eastern sky. Locate Vesta in between the raised arm of Orion, here, and the leg of Castor in Gemini, here. On December 1st, you can find Vesta along a line between Betelgeuse and this star, Tejat. A week later Vesta has moved so that it appears along this line between Betelgeuese and Propus, here. A plain old pair of binoculars should reveal Vesta a couple of finger widths to the west of these two stars. Use your favorite skywatching app as a guide to Vesta's location within the starfield you see on whatever night you're observing. Learn more at NASA.

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