BellaOnline Forums Education Astronomy Cosmic Winter Celebrations

It's December 1st today and children (and some adults!) are opening the first window of the advent calendar.

There is an ancient history behind the Winter Solstice - click on the link to find out more.

For six months, each day has been shorter than the last, the Sun lower in the sky. Will it disappear altogether and leave the people bereft in the dark cold winter? The winter solstice is the shortest day of the year and is associated with more festivals than any other astronomical event.

And of course readers in the southern hemisphere also have their winter solstice and ancient festivals, but in June, not December.

Here is an infographic that shows what's happening astronomically when we have solstices or equinoxes.

What Was the Star of Bethlehem?

The Star of Bethlehem is one of the loveliest symbols of Christmas. But what was it? Simply an inspired idea to emphasize the spiritual importance of the story? Or was it based on an actual astronomical happening?

That's a lot of cosmically cool stuff Mona

This is my favorite time of year - I love the movement into the Winter Solstice. I don't even mind that it gets dark so early

Galactic Winter Games are a tribute to the winter Olympic games. It's a tour of some really cool cosmic sights – as well as some hot ones, such as one of the biggest explosions in the Universe.

More good stuff to come, Deanna. Hope you enjoy it.

But surely people who live in California have a whole different understanding of winter to most of North America and northern Europe? In my early years in Britain, I'd have happily traded a British summer for a California winter any old time. (Now I'm grateful not to have a midwestern winter or a Scandinavian one!)

There are numerous cold geysers that spray out icy particles, some of which go to form one of Saturn's rings. However most of them fall back to the surface as a very fine powder snow. One planetary scientist described it as perfect for skiing. Here is a perspective view of "snow"-covered slopes of Enceladus. It's north of the edge of the active south polar region.

(Credit: NASA/ Processing by Paul Schenk (Lunar and Planetary Institute, Houston)

Mona, yesterday I got dressed, put on a scarf and sweater, and went out to my car. As I got in my car, I discarded the scarf and sweater - then I turned on the air conditioning. :::sigh:::

One of these days I'll get to wear my favorite scarf!! It may not be till the end of January, but that day, that one beautiful and amazingly cold day, will come

On February 15, 2013 a small asteroid exploded over Chelyabinsk in Russia doing considerable damage and causing a large number of injuries. Winners of gold medals at the winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia on February 15, 2014 were given special medals that included a fragment of the asteroid. Here is a worker shaping one of the medals. (Credit: Credit: RIA Novosti / Aleksandr Kondratuk)

The Olympic Committee wouldn't allow these medals to be awarded during the games so they had to be given out afterwards.

You can find out more about things from space that hit the Earth in Meteor or Meteoroid and Other Posers.

Comet Lovejoy (December 16, 2014) is framed like a cosmic Christmas tree with starry decorations in this colorful portrait. Its lovely coma is tinted green by diatomic C2 gas fluorescing in sunlight. A long period comet, this Comet Lovejoy should return again ... in about 8,000 years.

(Image Credit & Copyright: Damian Peach/SEN)

Christmas in the Skies

Christmas is a special day with a magic of its own. A Christmas eclipse is a great treat and centuries ago a long-awaited comet finally showed up on Christmas day. On the other hand, imagine spending the holidays a quarter of a million miles from home, as the crew of Apollo 8 did.

You can't take a Christmas tree into space. It wouldn't be allowed in the weight allowance and imagine the danger of all those pine needles floating around! But in 1973 a recycling effort produced a tree made of recycled cans on board Skylab.

Three craters on the asteroid Vesta, imaged by NASA's Dawn mission in 2011. It looks like a snowman - just needs a hat and scarf, perhaps a carrot and coal!

On Christmas Day in 2010 NASA's Swift observatory detected a lengthy and extremely powerful gamma ray burst. What if Vincent van Gogh - a knowledgeable amateur astronomer - could have painted it? Starry Night might have looked something like this.

Credit for the adptation: S. Campana, INAF-Osservatorio astronomico di Brera]

If you're dreaming of a white Christmas, the cosmos may have something of interest. How about deep snow on one of Saturn's moons, a gigantic Christmas tree whose lights are baby stars, a snowman on an asteroid or an Einstein ring?

Cosmic White Christmas

Solstice greetings! Today is December 21, and December 21/22, 2015 is the day of the winter solstice for the northern hemisphere.

Astronomically, the solstice is the time at which the Sun is over the Tropic of Capricorn and the poles are at their maximum tilt in relation to the Sun. That actually happens tomorrow at 4:49 PAM GMT. But at that time, in New York will be five hours earlier – December 21 at 11:49 PM and earlier for other North American time zones.

Southern hemisphere friends are well aware that the December solstice is their summer solstice. And for Australia and New Zealand, it will happen this year on Tuesday, the 21st.

By the way, even though this is the shortest day in the northern hemisphere, the mornings will still get darker for a few weeks. Earth's orbit isn't a perfect circle and we move at fluctuating speeds in orbit. So the Sun may lag behind the clock or be ahead of it, but it works out on average!

This is an exquisite 2-minute video showing the Snowflake Cluster, a group of baby stars in a dusty region near the Cone Nebula. It's made from observations by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.

Google celebrated the Winter Solstice with a Google doodle.

Happy Birthday, Isaac Newton. The great English scientist who revolutionized our understanding of gravitation and motion was born on Christmas Day 1642.

Happy Birthday, Isaac!

Mona, no white Christmas in Ohio in the United States.
Warm and wet.

A dazzling image that includes a cone, the fur of a fox, and a Christmas tree all occur as nebulae in the constellation of the unicorn (Monoceros). They're parts of the star-forming region NGC 2264 which is about 2,700 light-years away.

Red emission nebulae are excited by energetic light from newborn stars, and dark patches are opaque interstellar dust clouds. But where the dust clouds are close to hot, young stars they reflect starlight, forming blue reflection nebulae. The Fox Fur Nebula's pelt lies below center, bright variable star S Mon immersed in the blue-tinted haze, and the Cone Nebula is near the tree's top. Of course, the stars of NGC 2264 are also known as the Christmas Tree star cluster. The triangular tree shape traced by the stars appears here with its apex at the Cone Nebula and its broader base centered near the star S Mon.

There's more about Monoceros the Unicorn here.