Sky Sights January 2019

Greetings skywatchers, January has two exciting events both coming up in the next week!

Lunar eclipse

On January 20th we’ll see the first lunar eclipse of 2019, and it will be at a time when you should be able to easily walk outside and see it (your local weather permitting of course). The partial eclipse begins at:

10:34 pm ET / 9:34 pm CT / 8:34 pm MT / 7:34 pm PT

Totality (when the entire lunar disc is covered by the Earth’s umbra (shadow) begins at:

11:41 pm ET / 10:41 pm CT / 9:41 MT / 8:41 pm PT

The totality portion of the eclipse will persist for just over an hour and will cause our normally white Full Moon (January’s Full Moon is also known as the Wolf Moon) to turn a deep red or orange color.

Why does a lunar eclipse have a color rather than being black like a solar eclipse? The coloring is caused by the refraction of sunlight through the Earth’s atmosphere. Usually, the Moon as illuminated by the Sun appears from Earth to be a bright white color (although the Moon is actually a dark gray which you can see in Apollo images of the lunar surface). You will see as the eclipse begins and the Moon passes deeper into our umbra, its color will become darker and redder.

Unlike a solar eclipse, you can enjoy a lunar eclipse without the need for special glasses or equipment, just be sure to dress warmly!

Total Lunar Eclipse on January 20-21 2019 — Where and When to See

Venus-Jupiter conjunction

Just over a day after the eclipse, you can observe the conjunction of Venus and Jupiter in the eastern sky just before dawn on January 22nd. You may already be accustomed to seeing Venus as the Morning Star in the pre-dawn sky, and now the giant Jupiter joins our sister planet for a little while. It will be quite a spectacle as the 3rd and 4th brightest objects in the sky come with 3 degrees of each other.

Jupiter is so large, shouldn’t it also be the brightest planet we can see? Well although Jupiter is the largest planet in the Solar System, Venus is brighter (it reflects more sunlight) and much closer to Earth.

The conjunction will occur when both planets appear in the constellation Ophiuchus (the serpent-bearer), which crosses the ecliptic (the apparent path of the Sun in the sky) between Scorpius and Sagittarius; consequently if you go out early enough be sure to look for red Antares, the brightest star in Scorpius, just to the right of the two planets.

Ultima Thule update

Data is starting to come in from the Ultima Thule flyby, you can see the latest images as they are released by APL and NASA this week at the mission site:

NASA New Horizons Mission Site

[Note: the image above depicts the southeastern sky at 5:45 am ET. The red line represents the ecliptic (the apparent path of the Sun on the celestial sphere). I created this image using Stellarium, an open-source planetarium program which is available at http://stellarium.org]