Category: Astronomy
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From Christmas Eve to New Year’s Morning: the Sky at the End of the Year
As promised, today we are going to take a look at a couple of specific nights. Just at the end of December, there are a couple of dates where people may be staying up late or getting up early. We’re going to take a look at the 24th, 25th and 31st into the 1st, Christmas…
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The Ursid Meteor Shower and Late December Sky
Today we are going to take a look at the night sky for later December, particularly the Ursid meteor shower coming up on the 21st/22nd of December. I will also go over the major constellations that are visible. We will start with sunset on the 16th. The sky hasn’t changed too drastically since early December,…
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The Sun: Sunspots and More!
Today we are going to take a look at the Sun. In some ways, wintertime may be one of the worst times to observe the Sun, because it is so low in the sky, it’s not up for very long, and it’s more likely to be blocked by trees or buildings. In another way, wintertime…
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December’s Morning Mercury: The Smallest Planet’s Greatest Elongations
Today, we are going to be looking at the planet Mercury. We’re going to start just a couple of days ago, when Mercury was at its greatest elongation. We’re coming back to sunrise on the 7th of December, when Mercury reached its greatest elongation. Thankfully, it will be close to this greatest elongation for a…
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Classes of Stars: Spectral Classification
Today we are going to talk about stars, as we often do, but we’re going to talk about a way that stars are classified. Stars can be classified in various different ways, but one of the easier ways, one of the more immediate ways to classify stars, is by their color. Taking a look at…
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Winter Stargazing: Stars and Constellations
Today we are going to take a look at the winter night sky very generally. We’ll start just around sunset in early December, but we’ll go through the night and across a few months around midwinter. As we’re going to be taking a general look at the night sky, we’re going to ignore the planets…
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December Night Sky: Occultations, Elongation and More!
Today, we are taking a look just a few days into the future and further ahead into the coming month of December. To start with, the Sun is nice and low in the sky here in Ireland once we get just to the first of December. The time of sunrise for the 1st is just…
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The Geminids and 3200 Phaethon: December Meteor Shower
Today we are going to be looking at a meteor shower that is coming up in the month of December. Taking a look at the sky for mid-December, just coming up to 8 o’clock Gemini is already in the sky. We’re looking for the Geminids, the Geminid Meteor Shower and the radiant is up in…
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Comets and Meteor Showers: The Leonids and 55P/Tempel-Tuttle
Today we are going to begin by looking back to the Leonid meteor shower which happened, which peaked just a couple of days ago. To see the radiant of this meteor shower nice and high, we need the constellation Leo to be up, which it is now at about 3 o’clock in the morning. With…
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