Winter has finally arrive here in Park City. About 20″ or so fell in the last couple of days with more likely (and hopefully) on the way. Park City is ski country. That’s one of the main reasons that I’m here. That said, I’m also an avid astronomer. Park City’s snow filled winters can be a bit of a challenge to the hobby. Here’s a picture of what I awoke to this morning. I spent quite a bit of time clearing off the deck (twice) and the driveway (twice). Summer and fall are generally quite clear and great for observing. Winter, on the other hand tends to be quite a bit stormier. We get lots of snow here typically, and that means considerably more cloud cover.

On top of the cloud cover, snow is quite reflective. As such, light pollution from outdoor lighting is magnified considerably in the winter. Even night sky friendly down lights hit the reflective snow and send a huge proportion of this light back up into the night sky. In some instances, this requires astro-imagers to cut their exposure times considerably. This just makes it that much harder to get the killer photos that I’m aiming for.

Don’t let me bum you out too bad though. There are many pluses to astronomy in the winter. First of all, it gets dark really early… and stays dark until well into the morning. Finding time to get out and observe is typically much easier. Also, the winter night sky is chock full of some truly amazing astronomical targets. We’ve already seen M42, the Orion Nebula. It’s been amazing, and its not even really well positioned yet. The constellation Andromeda is sitting over head as soon as it gets dark. Andromeda is home to the sweetest galaxy visible to northern observers, M31 the Andromeda Galaxy. Swinging in the other direction, M45 the Pleiades Star Cluster in Taurus is an awesome rich field target. Just behind (east) this, the constellation Gemini is home to a few treats as well.

So, don’t think that you can’t do astronomy in the winter. You’ll certainly will want to bundle up as temps can be quite low in many areas… especially given that this is a predominantly low energy endeavor. However, the number and diversity of astronomical targets make it more than worth the effort.

I’ll finish by mentioning that next Thursday night into Friday morning (12/13-12/14), the annual Geminid Meteor Shower peaks. This is probably the best meteor shower of the year. It routinely puts 50+ meteors per hour during its peak and can easily top 100 per hour during better shows. This years event is pretty nicely helped by the fact that the moon will be less than 1/2 illuminated and setting before midnight.