The new year opens with four on the five bright planets every day sky. By the end of January, all five are going to be strung over the predawn firmament.
The month depends on Venus blazing away from the southeast 1 hour before dawn. Dimmer Saturn is always to the lower left, and Antares, the brilliant red heart of Scorpius, smolders to the reduced right in the ringed planet. Both quickly climb past Venus. Look within the 6th and 7th to get a lovely lineup of Venus, Saturn, and also a waning moon, and also for the 9th, when Saturn appears only a moon’s width in the brilliant planet.
High from the southwest, Jupiter also shines brightly. About midway between Jupiter and Venus is usually a pair of objects: reddish Mars for the left and Spica, the brightest star in Virgo, around the right. These two move apart as being the days pass by. Also, because of the 25th you may well be able to spot Mercury just across the horizon, below and left of Venus. That gives us a planetary string inside the order (southeast to southwest) of Mercury, Venus, Saturn, Mars and Jupiter. The lineup continues into the conception of February.
In the evening sky, the lovely winter stars are usually in full glory. Sirius, the brightest of most, shines from Canis Major, on the base in the dazzling array. Grab a star chart and find the other beacons: Procyon in Canis Minor, Pollux and Castor in Gemini, Capella in Auriga, Aldebaran in Taurus, and Rigel and Betelgeuse in Orion.
At 4:49 p.m. for the 2nd, Earth reaches perihelion, its closest approach towards the sun rolling around in its orbit. We’ll be 91.4 million miles from parent star --unfortunately, not nearly close enough for people to feel any extra warmth.
It’s perhaps lucky that perihelion falls in the northern winter. As it orbits sunshine, Earth’s speed averages about 30 kilometers per second. But that figure varies by plus or minus 1 %, together with the highest speed at perihelion in January and also the lowest at aphelion, our farthest point in the sun, in July.
Thanks to the greater speed throughout the northern the first day of winter, we not spend as much time in that portion of our orbit and even more time inside the part the place that the Northern Hemisphere is tipped toward sunshine. You can verify this by counting the days in the March equinox towards the September March Equinox - Equal Day and Night, Nearly, and then again in the September equinox to your March equinox. You’ll find we have several more times spring and summer than of fall and winter.
January’s moon reaches fullness at 7:46 p.m. for the 23rd. That’s lower than three hours after moonrise, which means you one is going to be another almost perfectly round beauty. Algonquin Indians called January’s full moon the wolf moon, for your hungry howling outside their villages. This year it makes sense the knot of bright winter constellations over the night sky.


