We personally experience better years and worse years – and so does the sky. Some years bring no visible eclipses, while meteor showers get washed out by bright moonlight, planets hide behind the Sun and auroras are absent. The year 2014 was somewhat like that, but the New Year promises to make up for it.
Have you noticed that the evening star has been absent all year? That’s about to change. In the next couple of weeks, Venus will return: lowish in the southwest each evening in the fading twilight, hovering dramatically next to Mercury. Venus will get brighter and higher throughout this winter and spring. Don’t bother searching; one evening, it will pop out and find you.
The sky’s second-brightest star, Jupiter, is about to return, too. This week it rises at around 10 p.m. in Leo, and is nicely up by 11. It comes up half an hour earlier each week, and will dominate the sky this winter and spring.
Saturn will have a banner year. Its rings are angled in an “open” configuration, better displayed than at any time in the past eight years. Anyone with a small backyard telescope can feast on the ringed world this spring and summer. So the planets will be really great, with only Mars absent in 2015 – and that’s the least photogenic anyway.
The year will bring two notable eclipses. A total solar eclipse on March 20 unfortunately can only be viewed from the cloudy north Atlantic near Iceland and Scotland. But a gorgeous total lunar eclipse will unfold over our region on September 27. The Full Moon will turn coppery red during convenient pre-midnight hours.
Then there are the meteor showers – the best displays of the decade. Both the famous summer Perseid meteor shower on August 11 and the even-richer Geminid meteor shower on December 13 will unfold under dark, perfect moonless skies. Until then, the only worthy shower happens this Saturday night, January 3. These Quadrantids are usually pretty rich, with a bright meteor every three minutes if you keep your eyes glued upward. Unlike the other showers, though, bright moonlight will subdue all but the brightest shooting stars.
Various robotic spacecraft missions will keep our solar system in the news as well. The Rosetta spacecraft will send us gorgeous images of comet 67P as it increases its violent outgassing during its approach to the Sun, culminating in its August 13 perihelion. Even while that’s happening, attention will turn to the New Horizons spacecraft as it reaches Pluto in July. This will be the first-ever craft to reach that now-demoted body, a mere two-thirds the size of our Moon.
A bang-up year in the night sky. May your on-Earth version be healthy, peaceful and full of pleasant surprises.
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