December marks endings. We light candles against the dark and count down toward new beginnings. Amid our anxious hurries, the stars slip overhead without a care.
The owl calls out. Silence. Then another hoot. This is the regular cadence of winter nights. I often look up from the telescope, searching the shadowy trees, but these owls always elude me.
And who knows why? From house to house and front-window tree, Christmas lights illuminate my suburban observatory brightly enough that I should spot any spying eye. But I’ve learned to rest in grace and allow the grandness of the season to fall into a point at my feet.
On clear nights the week of Christmas, I stare a bit longer at Polaris. Yet, like the owls, the Ursids remain hidden. In all my years of watching, I have likely glimpsed just one. This year, as the Ursids return, I am drawn to look more closely.
The Ursids: Out of Obscurity and into the Light
Long before they were named, the Ursids were likely observed by sky-watchers in China and Japan. These early observations, centuries ago, preserved moments of winter fire in the northern sky, though no clear pattern had yet emerged.
By 1874, the astronomer A. S. Herschel was mapping the heavens with a different purpose. Perhaps inspired by his family heritage, as the grandson of the famed astronomer William Herschel, he was trying to connect the debris of known comets to the meteors that streaked overhead. Herschel noted a possible radiant near Beta Ursae Minoris, the bright star in the bowl of the Little Dipper, and suspected it was a lingering gift from Comet Tuttle.
Soon after, British amateur astronomer William Denning spotted those similar dim December meteors, year after year, streaming from the Little Bear. Denning’s watch kept Herschel’s suspicion alive.
Yet the sky still concealed mysteries, waiting to be revealed.
Then, on a Saturday night in Slovakia, December 22, 1945, things changed. At Skalnaté Pleso Observatory, astronomers watched as meteors flowed from the Little Bear, first counted at 169 per hour. After correcting a recording mistake, the true rate was closer to 48 an hour. Still, the outburst drew attention.
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The Missing Years
After 1945, astronomers kept watch. They looked each December. They listened with radar. They waited.
But the Ursids kept their distance. Through the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, little was observed. Some winters brought nothing at all. It seemed the shower had faded into memory until December 22, 1986.
On that day, Belgian radio observer Luc Gobin noticed something unusual. His equipment began recording far more meteor echoes than normal. Far to the north in Norway, Kai Gaarder counted 94 Ursids in four hours and later recalled: “I was one of the few lucky to observe the great Ursid outburst of 1986. I was expecting to see about 5 Ursids an hour, but was stunned by the activity comparable to a modest Perseid maximum as I remember it.”
Like the burst in 1945, it was the sudden flash of falling stars that vanished within hours.
The Comet at the Heart of It All
We now know that Comet 8P/Tuttle is the source of the Ursids. The comet follows a steeply inclined orbit, tilted 55 degrees to the plane of the solar system.
The American Meteor Society has a good illustration of this on its site. It completes one journey around the Sun every 13.6 years, swinging from inside Earth’s orbit to beyond Jupiter.
But there’s a problem. The comet’s orbit doesn’t intersect Earth’s path.
So how do we encounter its debris? The answer lies in time and gravity.
The Mystery Unfolds
In the early 2000s, Esko Lyytinen and Peter Jenniskens took on the puzzle. What cosmic breadcrumbs could solve the mystery? Studying the evolution of the meteor stream, they found that dust particles ejected from Comet Tuttle require roughly 45 orbital revolutions, more than 600 years, before drifting inward to intersect Earth’s orbit.
This unravels the Ursids’ strange habits. Most of the stream is a faint haze of dust scattered across space. Hidden within are slender, dusty ribbons left behind centuries ago. When Earth brushes through one of these dense threads, the sky briefly comes alive.
The 1945 and 1986 displays occurred when the comet was near aphelion, far from the Sun. More modest activity in 1981, 1993, and 1994 happened closer to perihelion. The pattern reveals a layered meteor stream, shaped over the course of centuries.
December’s Gift
The Ursids peak around December 21st and 22nd. This year, as in most years, they’ll arrive with little fanfare.
To watch for them, wait until after midnight when Ursa Minor sits high in the northern sky. Look for Polaris, the North Star, and to find it, imagine a line drawn from the bowl of the Big Dipper. This navigational tip can help beginners confidently locate Ursa Minor. You don’t need to stare at the Little Bear. Meteors can appear anywhere, though they’ll seem to stream away from this region.
The next outburst might come in 2028, when comet Tuttle drifts near aphelion again, reminiscent of the conditions of 1945 and 1986. Or perhaps in 2033, as the comet swings back toward the Sun. These are only possibilities, not promises.
The Long Watch
So the owl and I will keep our vigil.
I have come to see the Ursids as kin to those distant voices in the trees. Like the owl I hear but cannot see, the Ursids remind me that hidden things still exist. Both require patience and faith in the unseen in the night’s stillness. The grandness of the season isn’t always found in spectacle. Sometimes it’s found in a lone flicker.
So I’ll blow out the candles, step away from the hurries of the house, and look up toward Polaris one more time. I’ll listen for the owl, keep watch on the Little Bear, and rest in the grace of the dark.
Sources and Notes
Top banner photo by Roy S.: https://www.pexels.com/photo/starry-night-sky-6279053/
Jenniskens, P. (2006). Meteor Showers and Their Parent Comets. Cambridge University Press. https://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/2001JIMO…29…67M
Roggemans, P. (2021). Ursids (URS#015) major or minor shower, and another outburst in 2020? eMeteorNews, 2021(1), 1–13. https://www.galileowebcast.hu/live/Ursids_2020.pdf
The Garden Astronomer 