The Planet Parade Continues, Lunar New Year means Moonless Evenings and Ogling Orion, and Spots Cross Reversing Jupiter!
This amazing image of the young crescent moon, which triggered the Lunar New Year in 2015, was captured by Michael Watson from mid-town Toronto on February 19, 2015 at 6:37 pm EST, when the Moon was a mere 23 hours 48 minutes past its new phase. Such moons are difficult to see it and to photograph. Happy Lunar New Year! Michael’s galleries of images can be viewed at https://www.flickr.com/photos/97587627@N06/
Hello, Mid-Winter Stargazers!
Here are your Astronomy Skylights for the week of January 26th, 2025 by Chris Vaughan. Feel free to pass this along to your friends and send me your comments, questions, and suggested topics. You can also follow me on Instagram and Bluesky as astrogeoguy! Unless otherwise noted, all times are expressed in Eastern Time. To subscribe to these emails please click this MailChimp link.
If you’d like me to bring my Digital Starlab portable inflatable planetarium to your school or other daytime or evening event in Simcoe, Grey, and Bruce Counties, or deliver a virtual session anywhere, contact me through AstroGeo.ca, and we’ll tour the Universe, or the Earth’s interior, together! My book with John A. Read entitled 110 Things to See With a Telescope is a guide to viewing the deep sky objects in the Messier List – for both beginners and seasoned astronomers. DM me to order a signed copy!
The moon will be out of the evening sky worldwide until next weekend, so I share some links to previously posted tours of Taurus and Orion for you to use out under the stars. The new moon will trigger Lunar New Year celebrations. Meanwhile, the Planetary Parade continues – far longer than you’ve been told. I break down where they all are and what to view. Read on for your Skylights!
Lunar New Year and Lunisolar Calendars
“Xīn Nián Kuài Lè!” 新年快乐! Mid-week brings Lunar New Year for many Asian countries, including China, Korea, and Vietnam! I touched upon the topic last week. Let’s dive a little deeper.
Unlike the Gregorian calendar used by Western Hemisphere societies, a lunisolar calendar uses the 29.53-day cycle of the moon’s phases to define the months of the year – usually starting each month when the new moon phase occurs, or on the day when the young crescent moon is first glimpsed after sunset. The placement of those months is anchored to one of the solstice or equinox events. Since solstices and equinoxes are Earth-Sun phenomena, and are completely independent of the moon’s phases, lunisolar calendars drift compared to our Gregorian system. And, because the moon runs through its cycle of phases 12.37 times per year, every second or third lunisolar year requires an extra 13th intercalary month or “leap” month.
Several world cultures (e.g., Hindu, Hebrew) still follow a lunisolar calendar, while Muslims follow a purely lunar calendar. The Chinese lunisolar calendar places the December solstice into the eleventh month – causing the first month of the subsequent year to begin about two months later – on the new moon that occurs somewhere between January 21 and February 20 on our calendar. Most of the time, that moon phase lands in early February.
When the moon officially reaches its new moon phase on Wednesday, January 29 at 7:36 am EST, 4:36 am PST, or 12:36 GMT Greenwich Mean Time, it will give rise to the Lunar New Year observed in many Asian countries. Since that new moon will happen on Wednesday evening, Beijing-time – that will be the first day of Chinese New Year holiday celebrations worldwide. It is also the first day of the Spring Festival 春节, or Chūn Jié (“CHWUN-jee-EH”), which ends with the Lantern Festival on the full moon two weeks later. Asian families will kick things off early by celebrating New Year’s Eve, Tuesday night, with a meal together. The Vietnamese new year is called Tết, short for tết nguyên đán, meaning “Festival of the First Morning of the First Day”. Koreans celebrate Seolla, from Eumnyeok Seollal “lunar new year”. Japan adopted the Gregorian new year reckoning of January 1 in 1873.
Happy Year of the Snake! The Chinese use a zodiac system – but their version doesn’t relate to the sun’s journey along the ecliptic, or even to any of the animal constellations used in western astronomy. Instead, their zodiac preserves the sense of that word from the Ancient Greek expression zōdiakòs kýklos (ζῳδιακός κύκλος), “cycle of small animals”. They assign an animal and its attributes to each year in a repeating 12-year cycle. That interval may have arisen from the 11.85-year orbital period of Jupiter!
By the way, among the modern system of 88 official constellations, 42 represent animals – from Apus (The Bird of Paradise) to Vulpecula (The Fox). I delight in displaying the drawings for all the constellations in my portable planetarium and challenge the visitors to find the animals. Of the remaining 46 constellations, 28 are objects (tools, musical and scientific instruments, ships, weapons, etc.), fourteen are human figures (e.g., Orion), two are chimeras, namely Centaurus (the Centaur) and Sagittarius (the Archer), and two are natural features, including Eridanus (the River) and Mensa (the Table Mountain). This website lists them.
The order of the animals in the Chinese zodiac is said to have been determined by a great race to become the guards of the Jade Emperor – with their rank determined by the order in which the animals arrived at the finish line – the palace gates. The race involved both running and swimming. The mighty ox was a shoe-in to win the race. But the rat woke up early on race-day and took the lead. Arriving at the river, he feared to cross it. When the ox arrived, the rat jumped onto the gentle ox’s back and hitched a ride across. Upon reaching the opposite shore, the little rascal jumped off of the tired ox and raced ahead to win the race, leaving the ox with second place! Did he cheat – or was he clever, and worthy to be senior-most among the guards? In another variation of the story, the cat and the rat, who had always been best friends, rode the ox across together – but the rat pushed the cat into the water and ran on to win. They’ve been bitter enemies ever since.
The fast and competitive tiger and rabbit were the next to arrive. The tiger’s greater size gave him an advantage over the small rabbit, which had to cross the river by hopping on stones and a log. The winged dragon, a shoe-in to win, stopped to do several acts of kindness, including helping to push the stranded rabbit’s log to shore. 2025 is the sixth year of the current cycle, named for the sixth-place finisher, the snake. When asked their age, Chinese people will commonly answer with the animal of the year they were born in, requiring you to guess which group of the twelve years they were born in.
Speaking of the emperor, in traditional Chinese astronomy, the Jade Emperor’s Palace or “Purple Forbidden Enclosure” was represented by the stars of Ursa Minor (the Little Bear), including the pole star, Polaris. That’s where the spirit of the emperor went after he died. Surrounding that part of the sky were constellations representing the eastern and western walls of the palace, which used parts of Draco (the Dragon), kitchen, guest house, archive, advisors, maids-in-waiting, and more.
The Chinese celebrate the New Year with red decorations and firecrackers because, stories say, long ago a mythical beast called Nian was terrorizing rural villages. After many years, an old man declared he would deal with Nian while the rest of the villagers hid during the night. He scared the beast away by hanging red paper around the village and making loud noises. Henceforth, when New Year was approaching, people would wear red clothes, hang up red lanterns, place red scrolls on windows and doors, and use firecrackers to frighten away the Nian. It never bothered the village again. The Chinese word for year is “nián” which is pronounced “knee-EN” and written as 年.
The Nisga’a indigenous group of British Columbia traditionally celebrate their new year when the crescent moon first appears after its new phase in February or March. Their celebration is called Hobiyee, a name derived from the expression “Hoobixis Hee!”, which means “the moon is in the shape of the hoobix”, the bowl of the Nisga’a traditional wooden spoon. The young moon’s orientation after sunset, with its horn-tips pointing upwards, resembles a celestial scoop – ready to be filled with an abundance of salmon, river saak (candlefish), berries, and more. Children gleefully run about with their arms curved upwards, pretending to be the moon. The first month of the Nisga’a year is called Buxw-laks, where buxw means “to blow about” and laḵs means “needles” – a sure sign of winter’s end.
Groundhog Day
Next Sunday, February 2 is Groundhog Day! I’ll tell you about the astronomical significance of that next week. Spoiler alert – it marks the mid-point of winter!
The Moon
The moon will begin this week near the sun in the daytime sky, granting us stargazers another week of dark evening skies worldwide – if only the clouds would go away. Sigh.
Folks living at tropical latitudes, where the moon’s orbit will stand upright in the eastern sky before sunrise, should be able to glimpse the old moon’s slim crescent in the brightening sky on Monday morning. The rest of the world won’t see the moon until it re-enters the western sky later this week.
The moon will reach its new phase on Wednesday at 7:36 am EST, 4:36 am PST, or 12:36 GMT. At that time our natural satellite will be located in Capricornus (the Sea-Goat) and 4.6 degrees south of the sun. As I described above, this new moon will mark the lunar new year for Chinese people, who will celebrate the year of the snake, and other cultures. Near the new phase, the moon is travelling between Earth and the sun. Since sunlight can only reach the far side of the moon, and the moon is in the same region of the sky as the sun, the moon becomes unobservable from anywhere on Earth for about a day. When the moon is less than half a degree north or south of the sun at its new phase, parts of Earth experience a solar eclipse. In 2025, that will happen for eastern North America on the morning of March 29 and for New Zealand on the morning of September 22!
Our first chance to glimpse the newly minted young crescent moon will arrive after sunset on Wednesday, though its fingernail clipping shape will be almost impossible to see in a bright sky through the haze above the west-southwestern horizon.
On Thursday the moon will have waxed into a wee bit thicker crescent and it will linger longer after sunset. By the time the stars begin to appear the moon will be dropping below the rooftops. Over the next few nights, keep an eye out for Earthshine on the moon. Sometimes called the Ashen Glow or the Old Moon in the New Moon’s Arms, the phenomenon is visible within a day or two of new moon, when sunlight reflected off Earth and back toward the moon slightly brightens the unlit portion of the moon’s Earth-facing hemisphere.
The western sky on Friday after sunset will offer a pretty sight and photo opportunity when the slim crescent of the waxing moon will shine below Saturn, with much brighter Venus gleaming above them. The moon and Saturn will be close together enough to share the view in binoculars. Hours later, observers in northeastern Russia can see the moon cross in front of (or occult) Saturn for the second time in January, at about midnight local time.
After 24 hours of eastward orbital motion, the moon’s spectacular show in the western sky will continue on Saturday after dusk. That evening, the slim crescent moon will shine close to the brilliant planet Venus, while the medium-bright, yellowish dot of Saturn shines about a fist’s diameter below them (or 10 degrees to their celestial southwest). After the sky darkens fully, around 7 pm, the faint, blue speck of distant Neptune might be glimpsed one lunar diameter to the moon’s lower left (or 0.7 degrees to its celestial south). The moon and the two planets will form a line that easily fits within the field of view of binoculars, but a backyard telescope will be needed to see Neptune well. Due to the moon’s orbital motion, by about its own diameter every hour, the moon will move above Neptune and to Venus’ left when you see it in more westerly time zones.
Saturday night will kick off the best block of the month for looking at the moon through binoculars and telescopes. At its Earth-facing hemisphere fills with more and more light, the sun is rising over its surface. The near-horizontal rays of sunlight cast inky black shadows to the west of every rock, ridge, peak, and crater rim. Focus your attention along the curved pole-to-pole terminator boundary.
Next Sunday night, the waxing crescent will jump higher than Venus. You can see it from late afternoon until it sets around 11 pm local time. The faint stars of Pisces (the fishes) will host the moon.
The Parade of Planets?
The so-called Planetary Alignment or Planet Parade that everyone seems to have heard about is not a one-time only event. It has actually been underway since mid-December, when Venus was setting in the west a short time after Mars rose in the east every evening and all the other planets were strung between them. From now until almost the end of February, you can see the same set of planets in the sky after dinner on every single clear night. In a few weeks, Saturn will be lower in a twilit sky and setting early. Around that time, the parade we’ll start to see Mercury and lose sight of Saturn. They’ll even kiss in passing!
As for the “alignment”, all the planets orbit the sun in nearly the same plane, so they stay close to the imaginary circle through the stars that wraps around the sky known as the ecliptic. It’s the track that the sun follows due to Earth’s orbital motion, so it travels through the familiar constellations of the zodiac. Since the sun is low in the daytime sky during winter, the moon and planets are lifted extra high at night because they are on the other end of the ecliptic’s teeter-totter. The reverse is true in summer. We’re lucky this year since planets look sharpest when they are seen high in the sky.
The ecliptic or “planet zone”, if you like, isn’t a straight line. It arcs across the sky from roughly east to west. The planets travel at different speeds based on their distance from the sun. They overtake and outrun one another. Our vantage point on one of the planets produces retrograde loops for the planets farther from Sol than we are, elongations, and solar conjunctions. The arrangement of planets varies year over year. Every few years a number of the planets end up in the same section of the ecliptic, causing planetary conjunctions and much excitement for photographers. About half of those “parades” are before dawn, though.
We had zero planets to see in the evening from May to August this year. Now we have six, with four of them easy to see and two of them very challenging for casual stargazers. They don’t look the way that the graphics on social media would imply and they are a lot more separated. This week Saturn in the west is a whopping 125° or 12.5 fist diameters from Mars in the east! Venus, Neptune, Uranus, and Jupiter are between them. As a bonus, at the end of this week, the waxing moon will start its monthly trip along the night-time ecliptic, visiting the various planets.
Once you know where to find them, the planets will be easily distinguishable from the stars. The bright planets outshine almost all the stars, and they won’t twinkle as much as the stars, or at all. With that knowledge, you won’t mistake the brightest star in the night sky, Sirius, for a planet. It twinkles furiously like a brilliant beacon in the lower part of the southern sky. Watch for the faint band of the winter Milky Way ascending around Sirius and upwards between Mars and Jupiter.
So, relax! Until Venus exits stage west in mid-March, you’ll be able to see a parade of planets any time you like. Let’s break down where each planet is this week, and what makes each one a treat to observe.
The Planets
Venus is the brilliant “star” gleaming in the southwestern sky from sunset until it drops into the trees with the surrounding stars of Pisces (the Fishes) around 9 pm local time. Venus will continue to brighten until February 14. Viewed in a telescope this week, our hot sister planet will exhibit a waning, but substantial crescent phase of uniform brightness, due to its shroud of thick clouds. It will increase in apparent disk diameter as it gets closer to Earth ahead of its inferior solar conjunction in late March. For the clearest views, observe Venus during evening twilight when the contrast between the bright planet and the surrounding sky is lower.
The faint blue speck of the distant planet Neptune had been sharing the sky with Saturn this year, but Venus has now moved closest to it. Neptune will be positioned several finger widths to the lower left (or 3° to the celestial SSE) of Venus this week, and visible in a backyard telescope while the moon is gone from early evening. The crescent moon will shine between Neptune and Venus on next Sunday night.
Venus kissed Saturn a week ago, and now the ringed planet will be dropping farther below her every night. This week, Saturn will be the medium-bright, yellowish dot shining more than a palm’s width below Venus. Once the sky darkens, the modest stars of Aquarius (the Water-Bearer) will appear below Saturn. Saturn’s bright, but extremely thin rings effectively disappear when they become edge-on to Earth every 15 years. Since we are only 8 weeks away from that event on March 23, the rings already appear as a thick line drawn through the planet. Try to view Saturn as early as possible, while it is higher in the sky. Remember that the crescent moon will shine below Saturn on Friday, and will occult Saturn, as described in the previous section.
Any size of telescope will show the rings and some of Saturn’s larger moons, too. In most years, Saturn’s moons are sprinkled around the planet, unlike Jupiter’s Galileans moons, which are always in a line. But while Earth is within months of being aligned with Saturn’s ring plane, its moons don’t stray very far from the ring plane.
Saturn’s largest and brightest moon Titan “TIE-tan” never wanders more than five times the width of Saturn’s rings from the planet. The much fainter moon named Iapetus “eye-YA-pet-us” can stray up to twelve times the ring width during its 80-day orbit of Saturn. The next brightest moons Rhea “REE-ya”, Dione “Dee-OWN-ee”, Tethys “Teth-EES”, Enceladus “En-SELL-a-dus”, and Mimas “MY-mass” all stay within one ring-width of Saturn. You may be surprised at how many of those six you can see through your telescope if you look closely when the sky is clear, dark, and calm.
During early evening this week, Titan will start from a position to Saturn’s lower right (or celestial west). It will approach daily, and then shine just above Saturn on the coming weekend. (Remember that your telescope will probably flip the view around.) The rest of the moons will be tiny specks in a line near the rings.
The very bright, white planet Jupiter has been dominating the southeastern sky from dusk onward every night. Jupiter will climb highest, due south, at about 8:30 pm local time, and then set during the wee hours. Jupiter has been creeping west above the stars that form the triangular face of Taurus (the Bull) and Taurus’ brightest star, reddish Aldebaran, which marks the eye of the beast at the lower corner of his triangular face. This week, Jupiter and Aldebaran will cozy enough to share the view in binoculars. On Monday Jupiter will temporarily cease its motion through central Taurus – marking the end of a westward retrograde loop that it began in early October.
From Tuesday on, Jupiter will resume its regular eastward motion and travel between the horns of Taurus. Retrograde loops occur when Earth, on a faster orbit closer to the sun, passes more distant solar system objects “on the inside track”, making them appear to move backwards across the stars for a period of time. Jupiter’s loop covered about a fist’s diameter, or 10°, of the ecliptic.
Viewed in any size of telescope, Jupiter will display a large disk striped with brown dark belts and creamy light zones, both aligned parallel to its equator. With a better grade of optics, Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, a cyclonic storm that has raged for hundreds of years, becomes visible for several hours when it crosses the planet every 2nd or 3rd night. For observers in the Americas, that GRS will cross Jupiter’s disk during early evening on Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday, and also after 10 pm Eastern time tonight (Sunday), Tuesday, Friday, and next Sunday night. If you have any coloured filters or nebula filters for your telescope, try enhancing the spot with them.
Any size of binoculars will show you Jupiter’s four Galilean moons named Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto lined up beside the planet. Those moons complete orbits of the planet every 1.7, 3.6, 7.2, and 16.7 days, respectively. If you see fewer than four moons, then one or more of them is crossing in front of or behind Jupiter, or hiding in Jupiter’s dark shadow – or two of the moons are very close together, or one moon is eclipsing or occulting another one. All four moons will gather to one side on Wednesday and pair up tightly on both side of Jupiter on Friday.
From time to time, observers with good quality telescopes can watch the black shadows of the Galilean moons travel across Jupiter’s disk. In the Americas, Ganymede and its large shadow will cross the southern latitudes of Jupiter on Monday evening, January 27 between 9:40 pm and 11:55 pm EST (or 02:40 to 04:55 GMT on Tuesday). Io’s small shadow will cross Jupiter with the great red spot on Friday morning, January 31 between 1:23 am and 3:29 am EST (or 06:23 to 08:29 GMT). Europa’s tiny shadow will cross Jupiter’s mid-southern latitudes on Friday evening, January 31 between 6:58 pm and 9:28 pm EST (or 23:58 to 02:28 GMT). Io’s small shadow will cross Jupiter on Saturday evening, February 1 between 7:51 pm and 10:00 pm EST (or 00:51 to 03:00 GMT on Sunday).
I skipped past the fainter planet Uranus. That distant ice giant planet will be observable from the end of evening twilight until beyond midnight every night. During evening, Uranus is located almost two fist diameters to the upper right of Jupiter and about a palm’s width to the right (or celestial southwest) of the bright little Pleiades star cluster in Taurus (the Bull). If you use your binoculars to find the medium-bright stars named Botein and Epsilon Arietis, Uranus will be the dull-looking blue-green “star” located several finger widths below (or southeast of) them. To get you in the vicinity of Uranus, look for the bright star Menkar shining 2.2 fist diameters off to the right of the Pleiades and down a little. Uranus will be a quarter of the way along the line joining the bottom star of the Pleiades to Menkar. In late evening, Uranus will be below the Pleiades in the southwestern sky.
On Thursday Uranus’ motion through the background stars of eastern Aries will slow to a stop – completing a westward retrograde loop that it began in early September. After that, the planet will begin to creep eastward again. Uranus’ retrograde loop spanned about four finger widths along the ecliptic. Uranus’ 84-year orbit of the sun makes it move slowly through the stars. It takes about six years to move eastward into the next zodiac constellation. Uranus will spend 2026 and 2027 within a binoculars’ field of view of the Pleiades!
Only two weeks after its closest approach to Earth in two years, the prominent reddish planet Mars will still be nice and bright while it climbs the eastern evening sky this week. Gemini’s bright star Pollux will be sparkling a small distance to Mars’ left (or celestial northeast). Its fraternal twin Castor will be a little above them. Mars will be highest due south at 11:30 pm local time and set in the northwest before sunrise.
At 100 million km away, Mars is close enough to Earth to show us its bright polar cap and dark patches on its globe through good backyard telescopes. I’ll post a labelled picture for views in evening here. (Remember that your telescope will probably mirror or invert the view. You can determine what your telescope does by pointing it at the moon one night and noting the difference between the eyepiece view and just looking with your eyes. The difference will always be the same through that telescope.)
Ogling Orion
This post is already lengthy, but there’s plenty more to enjoy on this week of moonless evenings. So I encourage you to read my detailed tour of Orion (the Hunter) that posted last year at this time here. I think you’ll agree that Orion is indeed a celestial treat for everyone to enjoy, even without a telescope or binoculars!
The Bull’s Best
If you missed last week’s tour of the stars and best sights to see in Taurus (the Bull), I posted it here.
Public Astronomy-Themed Events
Every Monday evening, York University’s Allan I. Carswell Observatory runs an online star party – broadcasting views from four telescopes/cameras, answering viewer questions, and taking requests! Details are here. They host in-person viewing on the first clear Wednesday night each month. Other Wednesdays they stream views online via the observatory YouTube channel. Details are here.
Keep your eyes on the skies! I love getting questions and requests. Send me some!