{"id":3377,"date":"2024-12-22T22:19:41","date_gmt":"2024-12-22T22:19:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/?p=3377"},"modified":"2024-12-22T22:22:12","modified_gmt":"2024-12-22T22:22:12","slug":"astrocal-january-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/?p=3377","title":{"rendered":"AstroCal – January 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Happy New Year!\u00a0 Evening planetary viewing this month will be great so let’s jump right to the star of the show, <\/span>Venus.<\/b>\u00a0 Found in the SW to WSW part of the sky, Venus will be shining at a spectacular mag. -4-4, it will be hard to miss.\u00a0 Setting 4 hours after sunset, Venus will provide an optimal early evening object as it races toward greatest elongation on January 9.\u00a0 Greatest elongation marks the point where a planet is farthest from the <\/span>Sun (<\/b>in this case, Venus will be 47 degrees E of the Sun)<\/span>.\u00a0 \u00a0 <\/b>Venus is \u2018coming around the mountain\u2019 so to speak as it moves rapidly toward the <\/span>Earth.\u00a0 <\/b>A telescopic (or binocular) view will show the disk to be<\/span> half full <\/b>and spanning 25\u201d (arcseconds) on Jan 11.\u00a0 With a top speed of 690,000 miles per day, it will be possible to see big changes in our view of our cloud covered \u2018twin\u2019 over the next ten weeks.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Moving 16 degrees to the upper left of Venus on January 1, we find <\/span>Saturn<\/b> at mag. +1.1 (remember, the width of your clenched fist held at arm\u2019s length covers about 10 degrees).\u00a0 Venus will pass just 2.2 degrees north of Saturn on Jan 18.\u00a0 By Jan 31, Saturn will be 11 degrees below Venus.\u00a0 A telescopic view of Saturn\u2019s Rings will show them \u2018closing\u2019 from 4 degrees from edge on (Jan 7) to 3 degrees by Jan 28.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Much fainter <\/span>Neptune <\/b>(mag. +7.9) is located in <\/span>Pieces, the Fish<\/b> and <\/span>Uranus<\/b> (mag. +5.7) will be near the <\/span>Taurus – the Bull \/ Aries – the Ram <\/b>border this month.\u00a0 An excellent guide for finding these two outer planets can be found at <\/span>abramsplanetarium.org\/msta\/<\/span><\/i><\/a> .<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0As we continue to move to the east, we can find <\/span>Jupiter <\/b>shining at mag. -2.7 in Taurus.\u00a0 High in the SE sky, Jupiter will be the brightest object in that area of the sky.\u00a0 Jupiter will be 5.1 degrees north and slightly Eof <\/span>Aldebaran <\/b>on Jan 30, just four days before it ends four months of retrograde motion.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>Mars<\/b>, located in <\/span>Cancer – the Crab<\/b>, rises in the ENE 1 \u00bc hour after sunset.\u00a0 By Jan 12, the <\/span>Red Planet<\/b> will have retrograded into <\/span>Gemini – the Twins<\/b> and rise around sunset.\u00a0 On Jan 15, Mars will be at its closest point to the Earth (59.7 million miles) in <\/span>opposition.\u00a0 <\/b>Showing a disk of 14.6 arcseconds across, it will reach maximum brightness of mag. -1.4 during the second week of the month.\u00a0 Look for the <\/span>occultation <\/b>of Mars by the <\/span>Moon <\/b>on Jan 13.\u00a0 Mars will also line up with <\/span>Castor & Pollux (<\/b>The \u2018Twins\u2019 in <\/span>Gemini – the Twins) <\/b>in the dusk and dawn skies of Jan 17. \u00a0 Watch for the Polar Ice Cap to continue shrinking as Mars moves toward its summer solstice on May 29.\u00a0 Mars can also be seen above the WNW horizon in the hour before sunrise.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0On New Year’s Day, look for the <\/span>Young Crescent Moon<\/b> low on the western horizon in the hour after sunset.\u00a0 The Crescent Moon will climb higher each night but still be below bright Venus until Jan 3.\u00a0 The <\/span>First Quarter Moon <\/b>(Jan 6), <\/span>Full Moon <\/b>(Jan13), <\/span>Last Quarter Moon <\/b>(Jan 21) round up the current Lunar phase with the next <\/span>New Moon<\/b> taking place on Jan 29.\u00a0 Look for the Moon to be within the <\/span>Pleiades <\/b>open star cluster (in Taurus) on Jan 9.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0If one visits the magazine section at the Ontonagon Township Library, copies of <\/span>The Planetary Report<\/i><\/b> are available for your perusal.\u00a0 This official publication of <\/span>The Planetary Society <\/b>comes out four times a year coinciding with the dates of the Winter and Summer Solstices and the Spring and Fall Equinoxes.\u00a0 It is a great way to keep up with the latest trends in planetary exploration.\u00a0 If you like to enter contests, the inside back cover always offers readers a chance to win a free <\/span>Planetary Radio <\/b>T-shirt by simply answering a space based trivia question.\u00a0 Yours truly won one of these coveted trophies a few years ago when my correct answer was pulled out during a random drawing taken from all the correct respondents.\u00a0 The Winter Solstice 2024 issue is the latest edition available and features some remarkable photographs from the past year.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>Compiled by Ken Raisanen of WOAS-FM – information provided by <\/span>Abrams Planetarium Sky Calendar<\/span><\/i>, Michigan State University.\u00a0 More information and subscription information can be found on their website at <\/span>http:\/\/abramsplanetarium.org\/<\/span><\/a>skycalendar\/ or on Twitter at <\/span>http:\/\/twitter.com\/AbramsSkyNotes<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0 Yearly subscriptions cost $12 and can be started anytime.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Top Piece Video – Happy 2025 to you all – nothing says NYD like U2!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Happy New Year!\u00a0 Evening planetary viewing this month will be great so let’s jump right to the star of the show, Venus.\u00a0 Found in the SW to WSW part of the sky, Venus will be shining at a spectacular mag. -4-4, it will be hard to miss.\u00a0 Setting 4 hours after sunset, Venus will provide […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-woas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3377"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3377\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3380,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3377\/revisions\/3380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}