Welcome to the Night Sky this January.

Well, it's a new year and for many people it's a time for new beginnings and making new plans. Some folks decide to learn something new or start a new hobby - like astronomy! Perhaps you are one of those people. If so, I'm sure you'll find this monthly astronomy page helpful and I hope you will return here each month for more information.
This month the Earth reaches an extreme position in its orbit and passes through a small meteor storm! And there are some other astronomical events of note so we will get to them shortly.

You can start to learn astronomy anytime - not just in January - but regardless of when you start, the first thing you are likely to learn is how to identify the two Dippers. (Unless you live in the Southern Hemisphere, in which case you would probably first learn to identify the Southern Cross.)

The Big Dipper and Little Dipper are NOT constellations. They are parts of two large and less obvious constellations (Ursa Major, the Big Bear and Ursa Minor, the Little Bear) but the Dippers are the most important features to learn to identify because they help to orient you and provide directions to other sky sights.

If you are in North America or Europe and you glance around the night sky you will find a series of very bright stars that make an obvious dipper pattern.

That's the Big Dipper. There's nothing in the sky with which you can mistake it. Each star in the Dipper is very bright and each has a name. It's useful to learn the names of all the stars in the Big Dipper because we use these stars to guide us to many other parts of the sky. For example, we use Merak and Dubhe to guide us to the "North Star" - Polaris.

Imagine a line from Merak to Dubhe but extended that line through Dubhe about five times as far as the distance between those two stars. The bright star you come to is Polaris. It's in the end of the handle of the Little Dipper. I haven't drawn the green lines of the Little Dipper because you should learn to imagine them yourself. Unfortunately, the Little Dipper is dimmer and less obvious than the Big Dipper. Notice how the handles on the two dippers bend (arch) in opposite directions. The Big Dipper's handle arches in the same direction as the bowl. The Little Dipper's handle arches away from its bowl. Also notice that they appear to be "pouring" from one to the other. They always look that way - as the sky rotates the two Dippers look as if they would be pouring something between them.

Now you know the two most important features in the Northern Celestial Hemisphere and you are well on your way to learning your way around the night sky. There's plenty to see this month so lets get into it!

Earth starts the year, like every year, by entering the path of some orbiting space debris! During the first week of January we will be experiencing the Quadrantids meteor showers as we pass through the debris field left behind by an unknown comet. This will be your best chance until April to see a "shooting star".

There are two things about meteor showers that bother most people - showers can be very inconsistent and the best time to see them is very late at night. It's true that some showers are variable from year to year and the predictions can be way off. Kind of like the weather! Some of this inconsistency is because the density of the debris path is variable. A fine example of these variable showers is the Leonids of November. Some years the Leonids are good and some years they are bad. The Leonids of 1998 and 1999 were great but a few years before they were disappointing. The Quadrantids are different. Their debris path is very evenly distributed so the Quadrantids produce a consistent shower each year. However, like all meteor showers, the best shows are after midnight. That's because after (local) midnight your side of the Earth enters the debris field head on. It's the same reason bugs are splattered onto the front of a moving car but not its back. It's possible for some debris to become caught in the tug of the Earth's gravity in such a way as to be swung around to the "premidnight" side but that isn't common. [It's possible for bugs to slam into the back of your moving car but most bugs end up on the front.] Therefore, all meteor showers are best after midnight - usually around 2 or 3 o' clock in the morning.

On January 1st we enter the Quadrantids debris field but we will be in the center of it two days later and at that time the shower will reach its peak number of meteors. Around 2 or 3 AM on January 3rd you should be able to see a meteor a minute on average. Of course, you might be "clouded out" that night. Also, the Quadrantids are not particularly bright meteors so any man-made lights will hide all but the largest meteors and those are rare. As with all astronomy, try to get far away from the lights and hope for clear skies. Look towards the east about four hours before sunrise on the morning of January 3rd, and a day to either side of that date, in order to see some Quadrantid meteors.
By the way, meteor showers are named after the constellation from which they appear to "radiate". The constellation of "Quadrant" was never an official constellation and that part of the sky is now part of Boötes, the Herdsman, but we still call this shower the "Quadrantids".

On January 3rd the Earth reaches perihelion, the point in its orbit at which it is closest to the Sun (0.983 AU from the Sun). Most folks are surprised to learn that our world is closest to the Sun in mid-winter! The seasons are caused by the tilt of the Earth, not by the distance between the Sun and Earth. Folks in the Southern Hemisphere will be experiencing summer during a northerner's winter because at that time the Earth's South Pole is tilted more towards the Sun, allowing the southern part of the Earth to receive plenty of warmth - while the Northern Hemisphere is cheated out of its sunlight due to the long nights. The Earth's orbit, including its perihelion, has no effect on the Earth's seasons.

Your sky map for the month of January Here's a map of the clear, night sky as seen from the center of the USA on the first evening of this month, an hour after sunset. Specifically, this is the view of a clear sky from a latitude of 37N. Star-gazers farther north, such as in Minneapolis, Chicago and most of Europe, will have more of the northern sky visible and the southern sky will be obscured by the horizon. Vice versa for those who are farther south. The stars will not change position relative to each other, however, throughout the month, the Moon and planets will wander, so they are not shown. Only objects of magnitude 4.0 and brighter are displayed. Here's a reverse color image of the map that will be easier on your printer.

This month long ago . . .

On the night of January 7th 1619, using his recently constructed telescope, Galileo Galilei discovered three large moons of Jupiter - Io, Europa and Calisto. A week later he discovered Ganymede, Jupiter's other large moon. Modern astronomers now refer to those four worlds as the "Galilean" satellites.

On the 1st of January 1801 an Italian named Giuseppe Piazzi discovered Ceres, the first known asteroid (minor planet).

The US Army's Signal Corps bounced the first radar waves off the Moon on January 10th, 1946.

The USA successfully launched its first satellite, Explorer 1, on January 31st 1958.

The USSR launched Luna 1, the first Moon probe, on January 2nd 1959. This was the first spacecraft to leave the Earth orbit.

Virgil "Gus" Grissom (Commander), Ed White (Command Pilot) and Roger Chaffee (Pilot) - the crew of Apollo 1 - died on January 27th, 1967 when a flash fire occurred in their command module during a launch pad test of the Apollo/Saturn space vehicle.

On January 28th, 1986 Francis R Scobee (Commander), Michael J Smith (Pilot), Judith A Resnik (Mission Specialist 1), Ellison S Onizuka (Mission Specialist 2), Ronald E McNair (Mission Specialist 3), Gregory B Jarvis (Payload Specialist 1) and teacher Sharon C McAuliffe (Payload Specialist 2) died when the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded 74 seconds after liftoff.

On January 4th 2004 the robot explorer, Spirit, landed on Mars and three weeks later its twin, Opportunity, landed on the opposite side of the red planet. Their six-month mission was to explore a few square kilometers of the Martian surface but their "unstoppable nature" (along with excellent design, engineering, construction and communications support from Earth) extended their mission well past six months! These two robots have done as much for Mars exploration as R2D2 and C3PO did for the Rebel Alliance!

I hope you found the Night Sky this Month to be helpful and educational. I invite you to return here monthly for new information.