BellaOnline Forums Education Astronomy ***Winter - Seasonal Articles***

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.

Galactic Winter Games

The Olympic symbol has 5 rings. An annular solar eclipse would make a nice ring for the cosmic games.

Photo: Mike Meyer, taken 2012-05-20 near Fluvanna, Texas

From March to May you can see the Spring Triangle in northern skies. In summer the Summer Triangle is most prominent, but may be seen all year round in most of the northern hemisphere. There is also a Winter Triangle. But grandest of all is the Winter Hexagon.

Winter Hexagon

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

Tyrrhenian Sea and Solstice Sky

At the moment of the winter solstice, the Sun reaches its southernmost declination in the sky, marking the start of northern winter and southern summer. Viewed from northern latitudes - and as shown in the above horizontally compressed image - the Sun makes its lowest arc through the sky along the southern horizon. So the solstice day has the shortest length of time between sunrise and sunset and fewest hours of daylight. This composite image follows the Sun's path through the December solstice day of 2005 in a beautiful blue sky, looking down the Tyrrhenian Sea coast from Santa Severa toward Fiumicino, Italy. The view covers about 115 degrees in 43 separate, well-planned exposures from sunrise to sunset.

Image Credit & Copyright: Danilo Pivato
Decription: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)

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

Newborn stars, hidden behind thick dust, are revealed in this image of a section of the Christmas Tree Cluster from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. The newly revealed infant stars appear as pink and red specks toward the center and appear to have formed in regularly spaced intervals along linear structures in a configuration that resembles the spokes of a wheel or the pattern of a snowflake. Hence, astronomers have nicknamed this the "Snowflake Cluster."

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/P.S. Teixeira (Center for Astrophysics)

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

The Star of Bethlehem is a lovely symbol of Christmas. But what was it? Was it based on an actual astronomical happening? Or simply an inspired idea to emphasize the spiritual importance of the story?

What Was the Star of Bethlehem

Imagine midnight on December 31 – fireworks, friendship and celebration greet a new year. But only if you follow the Gregorian calendar. In the past, a year often didn't start on January 1, and for nearly two billion people it still doesn't. So when does a new year begin?

When Does the New Year Begin