The crescent Moon stands between the brilliant evening star Venus and the much fainter Mars on the 2nd. Look for them in the constellation Aquarius some 20° high in the SSW as night falls. At the same time, Orion is rising in the E, below Taurus and the Pleiades, while the “W” of Cassiopeia lies overhead in the Milky Way.
The year begins with a flurry of Quadrantids meteors. Active from the 1st to the 6th, the shower peaks at about 15:00 on the 3rd. Its medium-speed meteors stream from a radiant in northern Bootes which skims low across our N evening sky and lies below the Plough’s handle as the latter climbs through our NE later in the night. With negligible interference from moonlight, the best times to watch may be before dawn on the 3rd, and after nightfall as meteors trace long paths from N to S across the sky.
Both Mars and Venus climb higher in our evening sky as they track eastwards and northwards from Aquarius into Pisces. Mars leads the way as their separation falls from 12° to 5° by the 31st when they again lie near the Moon. Our chart depicts their motions from the 12th, the day that Venus stands at its furthest E of the Sun. The latter improves from mag –4.3 to –4.6, its dazzling disc swelling from 22 to 31 arcsec as its sunlit portion falls from. 56% to 40%. Mars, less than one hundredth as bright, dims from mag 0.9 to 1.1 and appears only 5 arcsec wide.
The Moon stands below the Pleiades in the S at our map times on the 8th, alongside Aldebaran in Taurus and above Orion on the 9th and close to Regulus in Leo on the 14th/15th.
Jupiter, conspicuous at mag –2.0 rises in the E by 01:30 at present and before midnight at the month’s end, climbing to pass almost 30° high in the S before dawn. Creeping eastwards, it lies 4° above Spica in Virgo where it is near the Moon on the 19th, its cloud-banded disc appearing 37 arcsec in diameter.
Saturn, mag 0.5 in Ophiuchus, hovers low in the SE before dawn and is 3° below the waning earthlit Moon on the 24th. Mercury rivals or surpasses Saturn in brightness as it stands lower to Saturn’s left from the 5th onwards.
January diary
2nd 09h Moon 1.9° N of Venus
3rd 07h Moon 0.2° N of Mars; 15h Peak of Quadrantids meteor shower
4th 14h Earth closest to Sun (147,100,998km)
5th 20h First quarter
12th 12h Full moon; 13h Venus furthest E of Sun (47°)
15th 04h Moon 0.8° S of Regulus
19th 05h Moon 2.7° N of Jupiter; 10h Mercury furthest W of Sun (24°); 22h Last quarter
20th 21h Jupiter 4° N of Spica
24th 10h Moon 4° N of Saturn
28th 00h New moon
31st 15h Moon 4° S of Venus
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This article was amended at 1:45pm on 2 January to add missing labels to the graphic
