In the middle of the month, Comet Catalina will be visible in the vicinity of the Big Dipper. The Quadrantid meteor shower will peak on Jan 3rd-4th. Several other skywatching targets, including the Orion constellation, are also profiled.
The supermassive black hole is 40 million times as massive as the sun and powers a quasar that existed 700 million years after the Big Bang.
The asteroid zoomed by Earth at a perfectly safe distance of around 1.8 million miles (2.9 kilometers).
Images show surprise changes to the spacecraft as it interacted with the atmosphere.
