astronomy 2025 Archives

January 9, 2025January 9, 2025 by David Dickinson

The Moon Occults Mars for North America Monday Night, Just Before Opposition 2025

Now is the best time to observe Mars in 2025.

January has an amazing parade of evening planets, well worth braving the cold for. We have brilliant Venus, high to the west after sunset, reaching greatest elongation on January 10^th. Fainter Saturn sits just above Venus as the two meet on January 19^th. Meanwhile, Jupiter dominates the eastern sky, fresh off of opposition in December. But stay awake just a bit longer after dusk, and you can see Mars rising in the east.

As a special treat, observers in most of North America will also see the nearly Full Moon pass in front of Mars Monday night.

December 31, 2024December 31, 2024 by David Dickinson

The Quadrantid Meteors and More Ring in 2025

This Weekend: Catch the Quadrantids at their annual peak, Earth at perihelion and the Moon blotting out Saturn.

Quads — An early Quadrantid meteor from late 2016. Credit: Eliot Herman

Ready for another amazing year of skywatching? The very first weekend of 2025 offers up a flurry of wintertime astronomy events, eluding a swift meteor shower, a January ‘SuperSun,’ and a lunar planetary pair up at dusk.

December 24, 2024December 30, 2024 by David Dickinson

Top Astronomy Events for 2025

Catching the best sky watching events for the coming year 2025.

Comet vs solar scope — Comet C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS captured over the McMath-Pierce Solar Telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory, Arizona. Credit: Robert Sparks

How about that eclipse in 2024? Certainly, the Great North American Eclipse of April 8^th 2024 was one for the ages, instilling the eclipse-chasing bug in many a new skywatching fan. Now, for the bad news: 2025 is a rare, totality free year, featuring only a pair of remote partial solar eclipses. The good news is, there’s lots more in store to see in the sky in 2025, with a pair of fine total lunar eclipses, Mars at its best, and lunar occultations galore. And hey, the Sun is still mighty active, and the cosmos does still owe us another fine comet.

July 4, 2024July 4, 2024 by David Dickinson

Meeting Mercury at Dusk in July

Mercury puts on one of its best apparitions for 2024 this month.

Where have all of the planets gone? The late evening fall of dusk in early July also sees a sky seemingly vacant of familiar naked eye planets. Mars, Jupiter and Saturn are now denizens of dawn, and will stay that way for most of the remainder of 2024.

But two challenging planets are now emerging low to the west at dusk: Mercury and Venus. The two interior worlds are now mounting a slow return, as the hunt is now on the recover the two after sunset.