BellaOnline Forums Education Astronomy Winter Celebrations

In the northern hemisphere the days are getting shorter and shorter. The winter solstice will occur on December 21.

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.

Winter Solstice

I should note that although those of us who live in the northern hemisphere are coming up to the winter solstice, there's a flip side to this. People living in the southern hemisphere are headed into summer.

Each day for six months after the winter solstice, the Sun rises a bit higher in the sky. It reaches the maximum height at the summer solstice, the longest day. Evidence of rituals and festivals at the times of the solstices goes back thousands of years.

Summer Solstice - St John's Day

Season's Greetings from Hubble



There are 37 cards that incorporate images from the space telescope and designed to be used for any winter holiday. I have also used them to send e-greetings.

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

If you're a member of Pinterest you can see images of all of the objects mentioned in the article.

Galactic Winter Games tells of some astronomical objects related to wintry days.

Welcome to the Galactic Winter Games, a starry tribute to Earth's 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.

If you belong to Pinterest, you can see images of the things named in the article in Night Sky Olympics.

http://www.pinterest.com/astrobella/night-sky-olympics/

Happy Holidays comes with the letters that have been used in lieu of the alphabet.

The "letters" in this holiday message come from galaxy images provided by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and Galaxy Zoo. Credit: Tony Rice.

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.

Christmas in the skies

It's the northern hemisphere's winter solstice on Wednesday (Dec 21). This would be the lowest Sun position in an analemma. What is an analemma?

And here is an example of an analemma - it's made up of images taken by Robert T. Price. A northern analemma would look like this, but the Sun would be the lowest in the sky on December 21. This analemma was made in Bethanga, Victoria in Australia, and the Sun's lowest point was in June!

Wow! And this isn't an exoplanet with five suns! It's last year's solstice Sun at Lulworth Cove along the Jurassic Coast of England. The composite follows the arc of the Sun from sunrise to sunset.

Erosion by wave action has produced the cove's remarkable shape in the coastal limestone layers. The cove's narrow entrance is responsible, creating a circular wave diffraction pattern. The wave pattern is made clearer by the low solstice Sun.

Image Credit & Copyright: Chris Kotsiopoulos (GreekSky)

Amazing !

Mona, that is an incredible photo.

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?

What Was the Star of Bethlehem?

Hannukah begins at sunset today (December 24) and ends on January 1st. Greetings to those of you celebrating Hanukkah.

Best wishes to all
for a very
Merry Christmas

On Christmas Eve 1968 Frank Borman, James Lovell and William Anders were orbiting the Moon in Apollo 8. They made a live broadcast that attracted what was the biggest audience ever, up to a billion people.

Here is a link to their Christmas Eve broadcast.

from

Thomas Pesquet
Happy Holidays!

Credits: ESA/NASA The crew of the Expedition 50 flight to the International Space Station wishes you all happy holidays!

Credits: ESA/NASA

Good wishes to those of you who will be celebrating Kwanzaa

This nebula is NGC 5357, which astronomers are calling a “winter wonderland.” "With that frosty blue hue and flurries of stars speckled across cosmic clouds, this wintry nebula is simply stunning."

This composite image contains X-ray data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and the ROSAT telescope (purple), infrared data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope (orange), and optical data from the SuperCOSMOS Sky Survey (blue) made by the United Kingdom Infrared Telescope.

Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/PSU/L.Townsley et al; Optical: UKIRT; Infrared: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Tonight is New Year's Eve. I have, of course, been invited to so many exciting parties (Ha ha!), I couldn't choose from them, so will be staying at home and reading one of the books I got for Christmas.



Tweet from NASA JPL:

Say farewell to 2016 in cosmic style by looking up to see the #NewYearsEve #comet on December 31



Happy New Year. Good wishes to all for 2017.