2024 December 23

Christmas Observer’s Challenge

Roy Panther famously discovered a comet on Christmas Day in 1980 (C/1980 Y2 or 1980u) his observing log merely noted “discovered a comet”.

And while its unlikely you will discover a comet this Christmas, our challenge this month is to just get out and observe something on Christmas Day – the target can  be anything of your choosing

Perhaps one of the planetary Christmas baubles; Venus shining brilliantly in the south west around sunset, or Jupiter or Mars making their appearance all through the night. 

The Moon will be a waning crescent, rising a couple of hours before dawn, and you might find a nice landscape to frame it for a widefield view.

In the early hours before dawn will also be the best time to observe Corona Borealis – who knows, maybe T CrB will go off on Christmas day.

And for deep sky aficionados what would be more appropriate than the Christmas Tree Cluster NGC 2264 in Monoceros – a splendid target for visual observing or imaging. An ideal target for that new Christmas telescope.

But whatever you do, the objective is to observe something on Christmas day ideally. But if the weather is not cooperative, Christmas Eve and Boxing Day observations would also be welcome.

Please do post your Christmas observations to your Members’ Album, and check back here after the 27th for a gallery of images. 

Have a Merry Christmas and a good New Year.

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Gallery of Observations

It would seem that the weather was rather poor around Christmas, so kudos to the three observers who observed and posted their Christmas observations

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