Adventure Foot

Earlier this year I blogged about the Persied Meteor shower, but because of a full moon, the meteors were really tough to see.  Then later, there were the Geminids.  Somehow they managed to also be right around the time of the full moon, and it was cloudy here to boot, so I didn’t get to see them either.  But I’ve got great news for tonight- it’s the Little Bear’s time to shine!

Ursid Meteor Shower

Thursday and Friday night, December 22^nd and 23^rd, will be the peak of the Ursid (sometimes called the Umid) Meteor Shower.  The moon is waxing at 17% tonight (11% tomorrow), and the skies around Quincy should be clearing throughout the early evening to mostly clear by around 11 pm.

The shower will be seen emanating from the constellation Ursa Minor, also known as the Little Bear or Little Dipper.  This is one of the most easily recognizable constellations in the Northern Hemisphere.  The meteors will be seen as fanning out around the star Kochab, which is the brightest of the outer two stars in the dipper-bowl part of the constellation.   The best part about this shower is that it will produce about 12 meteors an hour constantly for the next several nights and into the New Moon on Christmas.  The constellation never sets in our part of the world, so no matter what time of night you’re awake, you’ve got a great shot at seeing some shooting stars.

The shower is courtesy of the tailings of comet 8P/Tuttle, which was last seen when it passed the earth in 2008.  This comet is a frequent visitor since it’s on a celestially-short 13 ½ year orbit around our solar system.   Last year, while I was out on an evening walk with a friend, we saw a particularly bright green meteor over Quincy.  It was part of the same shower, and it was truly breathtaking.

And as long as you’re out stargazing, it’s a great time to check in on some of the other planets in our solar system!  Seven planets are visible from Earth at different times of the year, but right now is the very best time to see them.  5 of them- Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn can be seen without the aid of a telescope.  The other two- Uranus and Neptune- can be seen with a telescope.  It’s very rare to have all seven of these planets visible from the same hemisphere at the same time.

Screen shot from the Star Walk App.

You can Google some star maps to help you find the planets, but the easiest one for me to describe is Jupiter.  Face North (which you already should be doing if you’re looking at the Little Dipper for meteors).  Locate the Little Dipper high in the northern sky.  Now follow it down to the constellation Queen Cassiopeia- this constellation is made up of 5 stars a very bright W shape.  Follow the right leg of the W like a pointer to the first very bright star you’ll come to.  That’s Jupiter!  Neat, right?

The photos with this article are screen shots from my iPhone App called “Star Walk.”  I highly recommend this app for any amateur star gazer.  It’s available for Apple or Android systems and is actually “on sale” for the holidays for $1.99 for iPhone and $2.99 for iPad as of this writing.

Happy Star Watching!