Poster’s Note: The text for this month’s installment from Dee Sharples, “The Sky In January 2025,” is provided below. Those wishing to listen to the article can click on the audio link below.
A new year brings us beautiful new sights of planets and stars to observe. The planets take center stage in January as they grace both the evening and morning sky.
Venus can’t be missed in the southwest shining brilliantly at magnitude -4.4 just after sunset, and it will continue to brighten. On January 17, Venus will point the way to the ringed planet Saturn to its west. Saturn won’t be nearly as bright at magnitude +1.1 looking like a fairly bright star. The two will be only about a finger’s width apart with your hand held out at arm’s length.
The giant planet Jupiter shines brightly all month at magnitude -2.7. It can be found in the eastern sky just after sunset about 40° high (Hold your fist out at arm’s length and count four fists up starting at the horizon).
Mars, shining at magnitude -1.4, will be rising in the eastern sky after sunset. On January 13, Mars will be occulted (meaning covered) by the moon starting around 9:00 P.M. The planet reappears about an hour later.
On the morning of January 1st, Mercury can be found close to the southeast
horizon rising at magnitude -0.4. It will be only 6° above the horizon at 6:30 A.M. It won’t be easily visible for long, so try to catch it in the first week of the month.
The Quadrantid meteor shower will peak around 4:00 A.M. on January 3rd, with meteors appearing to originate from a spot high in the eastern sky. Away from light pollution, with no Moon in the sky, you’ll be able to spot about 80 meteors per hour.
News from the NASA website: “An upcoming NASA space mission called DAVINCI (Deep Atmosphere Venus Investigation of Noble gases, Chemistry, and Imaging) will explore whether the inhospitable surface of Venus could once have been a twin of Earth – a habitable world with liquid water oceans. It’s the first NASA spacecraft to explore Earth’s sister planet Venus since the 1990s. It will study Venus from its clouds down to the planet’s surface and is tentatively scheduled for launch in 2030.
