Skywatch Line for Friday, January 19, through Sunday, January 21, 2024 written by Sam Salem
This is Dudley Observatory’s Skywatch Line for Friday, January 19, through Sunday, January 21, written by Sam Salem.
On Friday, Sun rises at 7:21am and sets at 4:51pm; Moon sets at 1:49am and rises at 11:45am.
The bright waxing gibbous Moon will pass the Pleiades star cluster on Friday and Saturday evenings. The Pleiades, also known as the Seven Sisters or Messier 45, appears as a glittering, bluish cluster of stars, in the constellation of Taurus the Bull. It’ll also be near the orange star Aldebaran, the brightest star in the constellation of Taurus. The Moon and Pleiades will cross the sky together and set after midnight.
On Sunday, the bright waxing gibbous Moon will lie within a triangle formed by three bright stars. It’ll be near the orange star Aldebaran and Orion’s red supergiant star Betelgeuse. The third star is the bright, golden star Capella of the constellation Auriga the Charioteer. You can follow them all night until about an hour before dawn.
Right after dark, face east and look very high. The bright star there is Capella, the Goat Star. Its name means “little goat” in Latin, as it depicted the goat Amalthea that suckled Zeus in classical mythology. To the right of Capella, by a couple of finger-widths at arm’s length, is a small, narrow triangle of 3rd and 4th magnitude stars known as “The Kids.”
Mercury remains 11° lower left of bright Venus low in the dawn all this week and remains at magnitude –0.2.
Venus, at magnitude –4.0, shines as the bright “Morning Star” in the southeast during dawn. It’s getting lower every week. Nearby are planet Mercury and the sparkly orange star Antares, the brightest star in the constellation of Scorpius. By Monday, Antares is 17° to Venus’s right or upper right.
Jupiter, at magnitude –2.5 in the constellation of Aries, is the bright white dot very high to the south in early evening, less high in the southwest later at night. It sets around 1am.
Saturn, at magnitude +1.0 in the constellation of Aquarius, sinks lower in the west-southwest during and after dusk and sets around 8pm. In late twilight, look for Fomalhaut, the brightest star in the constellation of Piscis Austrinus the Southern Fish twinkling nearly two fists lower to Saturn’s lower left.
Use binoculars to spot Uranus, at magnitude 5.6 in the constellation of Aries, 13° left of Jupiter in early evening. In a telescope at high power Uranus is a tiny but distinctly non-stellar ball, 3.8 arcseconds in diameter. Locate and identify it using the finder charts.
Neptune, fainter at magnitude 7.9, is at the Aquarius-Pisces border 21° east of Saturn. It’s still moderately high in the southwest after dark. Neptune is only 2.3 arcseconds wide. It’s harder to resolve as a ball than Uranus, but non-stellar at high power in good seeing.