Bakersfield Night Sky — January 4, 2025
Happy New Year and happy perihelion day! Earth is closest to the sun today at just 91,406,000 miles (1.55 million miles closer than its mean distance of 92.956 million miles).
The evening sky is putting on a nice show of solar system objects. From 6:25 p.m. to about 8:15 p.m., you’ll be able to see all of the planets except Mercury above the horizon (maybe a little sooner and a little later depending on the clarity of your horizon). Facing south in that time block, you’ll see bright orange-red Mars low in the left (east) below the bright stars of Gemini, Pollux and Castor. Almost in front of you, high in the southeast, you’ll see very bright Jupiter among the stars of Taurus with orange Aldebaran and above the bright stars of Orion. On the right, in southwest will be Saturn below the fat waxing crescent moon. Closer to the horizon will be super-bright Venus. Mercury is still in the early morning sky. It won’t be until late February that we have a chance of seeing Mercury with the rest of the planets in the evening sky.
In a week and a half, the night of January 15/16, Mars will be at opposition (opposite the sun on our sky, so a view from high above the solar system would show the sun, Earth, and Mars lined up). Opposition means we’re closest to an outer planet as we catch up to it and pass it in our faster inner orbit. Mars has an elliptical orbit, so with this opposition, Mars is not going to be as close to Earth as it has been at other oppositions. It will still be a good time to observe features on Mars with Earth-based telescopes and Mars is going to get as bright as Sirius, the bright star in Canis Major. On the night of opposition, Mars will be lined up with Pollux and Castor (see the star chart above).
The moon will be at first quarter on Monday night, January 6. January 6 is also going to be the latest sunrise of the year even though the longest night was on the solstice a couple of weeks ago. The moon be at full phase one week later on January 13. Even though the moon is nearly opposite the sun at full phase, it does not pass through Earth’s shadow because its orbit is tipped slightly with respect to Earth’s orbit around the sun. It will be “nearly opposite the sun” not “exactly opposite the sun”. On March 13 the full moon will pass through the darkest part of Earth’s shadow to be totally eclipsed. Totality will last a bit over 65 minutes long and everyone in the United States will be able to see the entire thing. Two weeks later, those in Europe and Africa using solar filters will see a new moon partially cover the sun—a partial solar eclipse.
The next major astronomical event for 2025 will be a total lunar eclipse on September 7 but you will need to be in Asia and Europe to see it. The moon will have gone completely through Earth’s shadow by the time we see the moon rising. The moon will not be a problem for several of the meteor showers this year. The Southern delta Aquariids and alpha Capricornids peaking at the end of July, the Orionids peak in late October, the Leonids peak in mid-November, and the Ursids peak on the December solstice will have only a thin crescent moon to contend with, so even the fainter meteors can still be visible. The Taurids, Lyrids, and Perseids will have a bright gibbous moon washing out all but the brightest meteors.
Space exploration launches in 2025 will include: four NASA lunar landers in its Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) series, two other NASA lunar missions, one lunar lander from JAXA (Japan), and one NASA mission to Mars (arriving in 2026). The ESA Bepi-Colombo spacecraft will make its sixth Mercury flyby in early January. The NASA Europa Clipper spacecraft heading to Jupiter will get a gravity assist from Mars in late February. That maneuver will send it back to Earth in December 2026 for a gravity assist that will finally send it out to a Jupiter rendezvous in April 2030. The ESA Hera will flyby Mars and its small moon Deimos on its way to the double asteroid Didymos/Dimorphos arriving in late January 2027. The NASA Lucy mission to the Trojan asteroids in Jupiter’s orbit around the sun will flyby the nearer asteroid Donaldjohanson in the latter part of April.
I hope that you’ll be able to find a time and place sometime in 2025 to gaze up in wonder at a dark night sky filled with thousands of stars.
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Director of the William M Thomas Planetarium at Bakersfield College
Author of the award-winning website www.astronomynotes.com
