Stargazing tips and tricks for December

Astronomy Professor Chris Palma from Penn State University offers his advice on how to catch the best astronomical events this December.

Transcript

00:00All right, we are well into December, but most of this month's astronomy events are still ahead

00:06with more on what to watch for and when is Chris Palma. He's a professor of astronomy

00:14and astrophysics at? We are.

00:17We are, which I am, Penn State University's Elbowley College of Science. Sir, thanks so

00:23much for joining us here. Penn State grad myself in meteorology 1990. I wasn't smart enough to be

00:29in any of your classes, though. No. Nice to see you. Thanks for having me.

00:36We're looking forward to seeing what's ahead here. So we said it at the beginning that we

00:40haven't missed too many of the astronomy events. Can you tell us what to look forward to?

00:46Yeah, people are always interested in meteor showers, and we've got a couple coming up,

00:51including December 13th and 14th, the Geminid meteor showers coming up. So I'm really looking

00:58forward to that. And when you're talking about the Geminid meteor shower, how many

01:04meteors per hour could you see when that event is occurring?

01:10Yeah, that's tough because it's really going to depend on the conditions. And in particular,

01:16we're going to have a bright moon that night. But if you're someplace dark, the moon's not too bad.

01:23You might see 15 an hour, so a few every couple of minutes.

01:29Is there a best time for that, did you say? I mean, I know once the sun's got to go down, but

01:34during the nighttime hour, is there a good time to view them?

01:39Yeah. Meteor showers are tough because you have to be a night owl. So after midnight to about 3 a.m.

01:45is really the peak. So it doesn't mean you won't see them early in the night, but after midnight

01:50is definitely best. You mentioned the full moon. So when is that in this month? And is there

01:56anything special? I know there's always fun titles and different names given.

02:01Yeah, I will say I kind of laugh at those funny names. But one of the nice things is

02:08the moon, sometimes it's a little bigger, sometimes it's a little smaller. You might

02:12have heard it called a supermoon. So the December full moon is going to be on the 15th and it'll be

02:21a little bit bigger than average. It's hard for us to tell. So maybe you want to call it a not-so

02:27supermoon, but it will be a nice, bright, larger-than-average full moon this month.

02:33All right, the first official night of winter will have another event. What could we see?

02:41Yeah, so there's multiple meteor showers this month, and the other one

02:46is on, like you said, the first full night of winter. I'm always a little bit hesitant. I want

02:53to manage expectations for people. Some people have the Hollywood version of a meteor shower,

02:58where you're just going to see thousands of them. This meteor shower is going to be more like five

03:04per hour, and they're going to be faint. So it's still a fun event, but don't expect that Hollywood

03:10meteor shower. We never listen to Hollywood. They always over-promise us. Chris Palma,

03:16professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State University's Elberle College of Science.

03:23Thanks for joining us on AccuWeather Early, and I'm sure you'll be watching the game on December 21st.

03:29We're in the playoffs.