Southern Hemisphere night sky tonight, December 2024

If you're based in the Southern Hemisphere and want to know what you can see in the night sky tonight, this page is for you.

Our monthly-updated night-sky guide will show you what you can see in the Southern Hemisphere over the coming weeks.

We'll include monthly highlights, stars, constellations, planets and deep-sky objects.

For more advice, read our guides to Southern Hemipshere stargazing and the best night-sky targets to see in Australia.

Highlights

Jupiter by Tom Bishton, Brisbane, Australia. Equipment: Celestron CPC 800 SCT, Skyris 618C CCD.

Jupiter is at opposition on 8 December 2024 in the Southern Hemisphere, achieving its maximum angular size for 2024.

As well as bringing spectacular telescopic views of its atmospheric features, its moons’ orbits are magnified too, making them good binocular targets.

Callisto at maximum elongation is now 10 arcminutes from Jupiter as seen on 8th, 16th and 24th. On 24th, Ganymede and Europa are also at maximum elongations between the planet and Callisto, 6 and 4 arcminutes respectively from Jupiter.

Stars and constellations

SMC and 47 Tuc by Michael Sidonio, Canberra, Australia. Equipment: Takahashi FSQ106EDX4, FLI Proline 16803, CFW-5-7, Robofocus, LRGB, New Deep-Sky RGB Astronomik filters, Starlightxpress Lodestar — The Small Magellanic Cloud and 47 Tucanae by Michael Sidonio, Canberra, Australia.

The far southern constellations of Tucana and Dorado are homes to the two brightest members of the local group of galaxies, the Small and Large Magellanic Clouds.

They are clearly visible to the unaided eye under dark skies, high in the south during December evenings.

If you take the centre of the ‘clouds’ as corners of an equilateral triangle and imagine the third corner below, south of them, you’ll have roughly found the position of the South Celestial Pole.

The Planets

Conjunction over Brisbane by Teale Britstra, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. Equipment: Canon 600D, 18-55mm lens — Jupiter, the crescent Moon and Venus over the city of Brisbane, Australia. Credit: Teale Britstra

The early evening Southern Hemisphere sky is a planetary paradise in December 2024.

Saturn and Neptune are low in the northwest, about to depart around midnight.

The real standouts are brilliant Venus and Jupiter. Venus is already low in the west, departing around 22:00.

At maximum brightness, Jupiter in the east outshines even the nearby luminaries of Orion.

Mars follows Jupiter into the sky, rising mid-evening. Mercury is slowly rising out of the dawn glow and best left until month’s end.

Deep-sky

Small Magellanic Cloud Fernando Menezes, Brazil, 21–24 July 2020. Equipment: Canon 6D DSLR camera, Canon EF 200mm f/2.8L II USM lens, iOptron SmartEQ mount — Small Magellanic Cloud, by Fernando Menezes, Brazil, 21–24 July 2020.

This month, a trip to Tucana, starting with impressive globular cluster NGC 362 (RA 1h 3.5m, dec. –70° 48’), less than 1° away from the northern edge of the Small Magellanic Cloud.

At seventh magnitude, it’s easily visible in binoculars, but overlooked due to nearby stunning 47 Tucanae.

Visually, NGC 362 is a compact 10 arcminutes across, with a densely packed core that beyond thins out dramatically, with stars easily resolved to the edge.

Next up, move 1.5° to the north-northwest of globular cluster NGC 362 to find the isolated, naked-eye (mag. +5.5) star Lambda² (λ²) Tucanae.

Only 13 arcminutes to the west lies mag. +6.6 Lambda¹(λ¹), making a great binocular double star.

Lambda¹ itself is a brilliant small-telescope double, with mag. +6.5 and 7.9 components, the pair lying a comfortable 20 arcseconds apart. All three stars are yellow.