Explanation: December's New Moon brought a solar eclipse to some for the holiday season. It also gave beautiful dark night skies to skygazers around the globe, like this moonless northern winter night. In the scene, bright stars of the Winter Hexagon along the Milky Way are rising. Cosy mountain cabins in the snowy foreground are near the village of Oravska Lesna, Slovakia. The shining celestial beacons marking the well-known asterism are Aldebaran, Capella, Pollux (and Castor), Procyon, Rigel, and Sirius. This winter nightscape also reveals <a hef="https://earthsky.org/?p=318599">faint nebulae</a> in Orion, and the lovely Pleiades star cluster. Slide your cursor over the image to trace the winter hexagon, or just follow this link.
Sirius, Capella, Rigel, Aldebaran, Procyon & Pollux
....................................................................... SCRAPPy is a cartoon character created by Dick Huemer for Charles Mintz's Krazy Kat Studio (distributed by Columbia Pictures). A little round-headed boy, Scrappy often found himself involved in off-beat neighborhood adventures. Usually paired with his little brother Oopy (originally Vontzy), Scrappy also had an on-again, off-again girlfriend named Margy and a Scotty dog named Yippy. In later shorts the annoying little girl Brat and pesky pet Petey Parrot also appeared. Huemer created the character in 1931, and he remained aboard Mintz's studio until 1933. With Huemer's departure, his colleagues Sid Marcus and Art Davis assumed control of the series. The final Scrappy cartoon, The Little Theatre was released in 1941.
Re: APOD: The Northern Winter Hexagon (2019 Dec 26)
Posted: Thu Dec 26, 2019 4:37 pm
by Ann
k.w.jung wrote: ↑Thu Dec 26, 2019 11:11 am
Why the Pleiades in Dec. 24 photo was not clearly visible like this one?
Good question. It should have been clearly visible in the Dec. 24 image. It looks to me as if something happened to the picture and the Pleiades "shrunk"! The place in the sky where they should be does sport a small - make that a small - blue smudge!
Today's APOD is very lovely! Thanks, Petr Horálek!
The Northern Winter Hexagon
