A New Year is a good time to adopt new habits and hobbies to change your life and do something you might have been putting off for a while. Some of these hobbies can include all sorts of things, whether it’s painting, reading, sky diving (an extreme but interesting hobby!) or even stargazing. If the latter sounds appealing to you, you can build off your hobby this month by going out to see the wonderful celestial events lined up.
Starting the month off strong, the Quadrantid meteor shower will peak on January 3. The showers will begin on December 28 and continue until the second week of January. The only difference between seeing it on January 3 and any other day is that the shower will be much more clear on this night. Luckily for us, the Moon will be a crescent, preventing its light from interfering with the meteor shower. This is an ideal condition because the light from stars is quite faint, making it hard to see when you have a large amount of light that the Moon is reflecting.
If one of your hobbies is photography, be sure to capture the close orbit of Venus, Saturn, and the Moon on January 3. After sunset, look to the southwest where you will find a waxing crescent Moon very close to the planets.
Those living in Europe, Africa, and eastern Greenland will be treated with viewing the occultation of Saturn and the Moon. An occultation is when the Moon moves in front of a planet and normally lasts about an hour. So at the start of the hour, the planet or object it is occurring will be on one side, and after an hour goes by, it will appear on the other side. For those living in North America, the Moon and Saturn will only appear to be really close to each other.
It seems that this month a lot of planets will be occulted by the Moon because from January 13-15, Mars will be in occultation as well. This can be viewed in most parts of the world but in case you can’t see it, you may be able to only see the close orbit of Mars and the Moon. On this night, Mars will also be in opposition with the Moon, meaning that the red planet will be in its brightest and largest form.
On January 20, Venus and Saturn will be putting on dazzling shows in the night sky. In the dark hours of this night, Venus and Saturn will be in conjunction, meaning that their orbits will align along with the Moon. The best time to view this will be after sunset.
Be sure to research some other celestial events that may be happening in the area you live in and don’t worry, most of these events will be taking place after sunset, so depending on where you live, you won’t be missing out on a lot of sleep!
Check out In-The-Sky.org to see what time it will be best to view these events.
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