The Leonids is an average shower, producing up to 15 meteors per hour at its peak. This shower is unique in that it has a cyclonic peak about every 33 years where hundreds of meteors per hour can be seen. That last of these occurred in 2001. The Leonids is produced by dust grains left behind by comet Tempel-Tuttle, which was discovered in 1865. The shower runs annually from November 6-30. It peaks this year on the night of the 17th and morning of the 18th. The waning gibbous moon will block many of the fainter meteors this year, but if you are patient you should be able to catch quite a few good ones. Best viewing will be from a dark location after midnight. Meteors will radiate from the constellation Leo, but can appear anywhere in the sky.
Normally a full Moon is a death sentence for a meteor shower, so a Supermoon on the night of December 14 will certainly put a damper on the usually-breathtaking Geminids. However, since the Geminids are the biggest and brightest shower of the year, a few “shooting stars” might peek through the Moon glow. Make a night of it by observing craters and geographical features on the Moon and see if a stray meteor streaks by here and there…
see http://cantonbecker.com/retrograde for details…
The winter solstice is the shortest day of the year, respectively, in the sense that the length of time elapsed between sunrise and sunset on this day is a minimum for the year. Of course, daylight saving time means that the first Sunday in April has 23 hours and the last Sunday in October has 25 hours, but these human meddlings with the calendar and do not correspond to the actual number of daylight hours.
If you life in the southern hemisphere, this is your Summer Solstice, celebrating the longest day of the year.
http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/astronomy/WinterSolstice.html