December stargazing from the Old Town Sidewalk Astronomers

Hi stargazers!  There has been plenty of publicity about the December Gemind meteor shower, but we haven't really wanted to promote public get-togethers for stargazing.  You may still be able to see some for the next few days, as this shower is active from Dec 1 through the 22nd. We're a few days past the peak of Dec 13/14, but if you want to get up and look outside from your darkest corner, between 11 p.m. and 4 a.m. you may get lucky! The International Meteor Organization publishes a great weekly and monthly wrap-up of meteor activity.  You can bookmark here https://www.imo.net/viewing-the-geminid-meteor-shower-in-2020/ No doubt you have been watching the great planets Jupiter and Saturn in the night sky.  I like this write-up from Astronomy Magazine: https://astronomy.com/news/2020/12/jupiter-and-saturn-will-form-rare-christ…. Keep looking low in the southwest sky an hour after sunset. December21 is the closest of conjunction, and both this article and NASA's What's Up video shows where to look and what's up with that! I'm sure you've been watching the pair get closer to one another over the last several months! https://youtu.be/NEVCDhEyKx0 One fun at-home stargazing project is sketching the moon.  I've been sketching and writing about lunar observing for over 30 years.  My first lunar writeup, for the Sidewalk Astronomers newsletter was called "A day in the life of the moon".  It features whimsical lunar phase drawings made by my mom Barbara Miller, now 90 and still drawing and painting! http://photo.whiteoaks.com/2009-galileo&me/slides/moonwriteup004.html For your armchair enjoyment, here is my 2009 sketching series honoring the 400th anniversary of Galileo's own first telescopic sketches in 1609. I used a small small refractor of a similar aperture to Galileo's own 1609 telescope, but with 20th century optics. My series of sketches recreate Galileo's own sketches of sunspots, stars and clusters (like the Pleiades and Orion's Trapezium stars), planets and their moons (the famous Galilean satellites of Jupiter) and moon phases. Galileo even sketched Jupiter and unknown-at-the-time Neptune, and I sketched them both, too. Scroll http://jane.whiteoaks.com/2009/05/25/chasing-galileo-sketches-through-a-sma…. I used the same small 3" x 5" (or occasionally 5" x 8" spiral bound Strathmore sketch pads and  Faber Castell blacklead pencils I used to start this hobby decades ago. If you decide to try sketching, send me some of your examples. Over and out! Jane -- Jane Houston Jones, retired JPLer *:-.,_,.-:*'``'*:-.,_,.-: Twitter: @jhjones @otastro Instagram @janehoustonjones http://www.otastro.org/ Astronomy, travel, music, food, cats