BellaOnline Forums Education Astronomy Solstice to New Year - Quiz

The winter solstice, winter constellations, Christmas, dark and cold, exploration, and famous birthdays. Here's a little quiz for you that picks out some highlights in the period from the solstice through New Year's Day.

Solstice to New Year - Quiz

Why do we have seasons?

For people living outside the tropics, June 21st is the longest or shortest day of the year, a solstice. It marks the first day of summer in the northern hemisphere and winter in the southern hemisphere. But why do we have seasons? And do other planets have them?

Why Planets Have Seasons

There's quite a contrast between Io and Europa, two of Jupiter's Galilean moons. Although many astrobiologists had considered Europa the most likely place to find primitive life, there is growing support for the idea that Saturn's moon Enceladus is even more likely.

The Pleiades - the Seven Sisters - were shown in star catalogs six thousand years ago. Visible from northern and southern hemispheres, probably every culture that ever watched the sky had a name for them. But what is this group of stars? And are there actually seven of them?

Pleiades - the Seven Sisters

Taurus also has a second visible star cluster. It's called the Hyades and in mythology were sisters of the Pleiades.

Here is the Christmas Tree cluster, part of NGC 2264 in the constellation Monoceros the Unicorn. The Christmas Tree is on its side here. It's a star cluster, so you're looking for the blue stars outlining a stylized tree shape. To help you orient yourself here, look on the right hand side where the small cone-shaped nebula is (It's called the Cone nebula!) That's where the star would be on a Christmas tree, so look to the bright blue star on its left. Then you should be able to pick out the triangular outline of the cluster.

Credit & Copyright: Kerry-Ann Lecky Hepburn (Weather and Sky Photography) & Stefano Cancelli (AstroGarage)

space photos are beautiful. Skies here have been clear and stars are twinkling.

This photograph of Orion (taken by David Malin) has been overlaid with labels and the constellation lines. However you should be able to see that Betelgeuse has a distinctly red/orange color. The other bright stars in the constellation are blue.

You can find out here more about Orion the Hunter.

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. No one had ever been so far from Earth and no one since has spent Christmas so far from home.

Here is a link to their Christmas Eve broadcast.

Giuseppe Piazzi used this instrument, called a Ramsden Circle, to discover Ceres on January 1, 1801. The telescope is on display at the Palermo Observatory in Sicily.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Palermo Observatory