Fireworks Continue into the New Year

"The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible."

--Arthur C. Clarke


Firework displays occurred all over the world celebrating the New Year. But keep watching -- the night sky has a few fireworks of its own. On January 3rd the Quadrantid meteor shower peaks. The radiant of the shower is located in an area of the sky between the northern most star in the constellation Boötes, one leg of Hercules, the tip of the handle of the Big Dipper, and the tail of Draco the Dragon. Boötes looks like a large ice cream cone in the sky. For northern observers the radiant will be above the horizon all night, however for southern observers the meteor shower will best be viewed after 2:30 am.

With a thin crescent moon this year, the sky should be dark. The prediction this year is for a shower of a maximum of 120 meteors per hour -- but for most of us who live near cities with light pollution, expect to see about 20-30 meteors per hour.

After the meteor shower there will be plenty of planets to see. The extremely bright Venus, which has been easy to spot low in the west for the past few months, will quickly begin approaching the Sun in the sky, and soon disappear by mid-month.

By 8 pm reddish-orange Mars is directly overhead in the constellation of Aires the Ram. This is the best time to sneak a peak at Mars, because over the course of the upcoming year Mars will become about 25 times fainter than it currently is and will appear only 3.6 arc seconds in diameter -- the size of a quarter at a distance of almost 1 mile. On the night of the 8th, Mars will be about the width of your thumb at arms distance south of the Moon.

As Mars approaches overhead at 8 pm, Saturn will be sneaking up over the eastern horizon in the constellation of Cancer the Crab. The crab actually looks like a faint letter Y in the sky, and Saturn lies right at the fork in the Y. For those observing Saturn through a telescope, the tilt in the rings will be increasing through April, making it a perfect time to observe this nighttime jewel.

If you plan on spotting Jupiter this month you are going to have to stay up late. Rising around 2 am, Jupiter appears around the same time that Mars disappears below the western horizon. Jupiter is currently in the constellation of Libra and is the brightest object in the eastern sky, appearing slightly brighter than the star Sirius.

With a plethora of planets to find in the sky this month and some of the bright winter constellations now coming into view, there will be plenty to go out and find this month.