It’s a busy month for backyard stargazers
The weather is getting cooler, the skies are getting darker sooner and it feels like winter, but technically the season hasn’t started yet. The winter solstice marks the start of the season on December 21.
But even though winter isn’t in full swing until the end of the month, December is full of cosmic phenomena. Terry Oswalt, an astronomer, and associate dean of the Physical Sciences Department at Embry Riddle Aeronautical University said one of the biggest events this month is a meteor shower on December 13 and 14.
“By shower, we don't mean the sky is completely covered with shooting stars so to speak,” Oswalt said. “Something like 120 per hour, which is one or two every minute for an hour. That's a really good meteor shower.”
Oswalt said to lay a blanket out under the stars if you want to spot meteors whizzing by. The best way to see these meteors is with binoculars. Compared to a telescope, binoculars are much cheaper and have some advantages.
“You can usually easily point binoculars towards something you can see with the naked eye and get a feel for the effects of magnification and how easy it is to point at things you don't see using the things around it that you do see. So, binoculars make that easy. Pointing a telescope picks some skill, and a lot of beginners get frustrated unless they start with the binoculars.”
As this year comes to an end, Oswalt is scouting the skies for another cosmic event: an Auroa display. Back in May, he traveled to New Zealand to see the famous geomagnetic storm that could be seen around the world. Even here in Florida.
Although there are no scheduled storms yet, Oswalt said there are other bright things to observe in the sky. Stargazers can see several constellations and planets in the night sky this month.
“Jupiter will be slowly moving by the red giant star Aldebaran, which is the eyeball of Taurus, the bull… and also between the Pleiades, sometimes known as the Seven Sisters,” Oswalt said. “And the Hyades, that V shape constellation that looks like the horns of Taurus.”
A race to the moon
In 1969, the U.S. landed the first humans on moon, propelled by a race with the Soviet Union.
But now, a new kind of space race has begun, this time, with China. While China says it plans to land humans on the moon in 2030, leaders in the U.S. have raised concerns that the U.S. is lagging behind, and China could put humans on the lunar surface before the U.S. makes its return.
However, Greg Autry said the U.S. can make it to the moon before China. He outlined that argument in his new book Red Moon Rising: How America Will Beat China on the Final Frontier.
Autry said while 2030 seems far away, China seems to be on schedule and always has executed the plans and goals the nation set forth.
“Their lunar lander program, in particular with the robotic landers, has been nothing short of magnificent,” Autry said. “They've hit their schedules. They've been able to land multiple times on the moon, deploy rovers and do sample return missions back from the moon twice. As well as land on the far side of the moon, which the U.S. hasn't been to before, and down on the south polar regions which are the critical resource areas everybody's interested in right now.”
Aside from China’s advance towards landing humans on the moon, Autry argued in his book that the U.S. partnership with commercial space companies will help get NASA astronauts to the moon first.
“We’ve got all of these really interesting space startups and great traditional companies who have years worth of experience doing this,” Autry said. “By turning loose the power of our markets and commercial sector that they will succeed. “We can't beat China in communism… the fact that their lander is ready and ours isn’t, and their space program is on track, I think more than anything, has to do with the fact they've chosen very, very simple architecture and technological choices.”
However, it isn’t just about landing on the moon. According to Autry, the moon is the future, and it is vital the U.S. establishes a settlement on the lunar surface.
“What it's about is sustainable presence on the moon so that we can begin to do economic development,” Autry said. “There's benefits, both economically and environmentally, that can come from developing the moon and further so that we can actually be there sustainably and permanently. Allowing people to eventually begin lives off for the earth the concept of space settlement”
