Santa won’t need Rudolph this year.
There will be more than just colored lights brightening the streets this Christmas. For the first time in 38 years, there will be a full moon. The last time this happened was in 1977, and it won’t happen again until the year 2034, NASA confirmed. This full moon will reach its peak size at 6:11 a.m. Eastern Time.
The last full moon of the year is called the Full Cold Moon. This is because December nights are at their longest and darkest.
But do you know what is even rarer than a Christmas full moon? A Christmas lunar eclipse! Unfortunately, the next time a lunar eclipse will occur on Christmas will be in the year 2531. However, a Christmas solar eclipse will happen a lot sooner, just not soon enough for us to see it — in the year 2307.
SEE ALSO: Everything You Need to Know for This Weekend’s Epic Meteor Shower
The full moon is not the only astronomical gift for us this Christmas — an asteroid is to pass close to Earth on Christmas Eve. The asteroid 163899, also known as 2003 SD220, will pass by Earth at a distance of 6.7 million miles (about 28 times as far as the moon).
It is a really big asteroid, about 1.25 miles wide, whipping around in space at about 17.5 miles per second. You will need a telescope to see it, but there is nothing to worry about if you don’t have one and miss it this year. It will be back again in December of 2018 and 2021 — just make sure you have a telescope by then.
NASA’s asteroid radar research group notes:
“The 2015 apparition is the first of five encounters by this object in the next 12 years when it will be close enough for a radar detection. By obtaining radar ranging measurements at each observing opportunity, it may be possible to detect non-gravitational perturbations due to the Yarkovsky effect. If so, then we can obtain an estimate of the object's mass, information that is invaluable for understanding the object's bulk density and internal structure.”
The object is on NASA’s Near-Earth Object Human Space Flight Accessible Targets Study (NHATS) list of potential human-accessible targets, so astronomers working at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico and Goldstone in California will be closely tracking the asteroid over the next couple weeks.
There are people claiming that because this giant asteroid is travelling so close to Earth that it will cause earthquakes, however according to Eddie Irizarry from EarthSky, “Those assertions are misleading and incorrect. Even if 2003 SD220 were passing closer, it’s doubtful earthquakes would result. In fact, there’s no scientific evidence that an asteroid’s flyby can cause any seismic activity, unless it collides with Earth, but—in this case—that clearly will not be the case.”
So just enjoy the sights and have a very safe and merry Christmas.
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