January 2025 Stargazing Guide

Greetings junior scientists, scientists and citizens this great big weird, wild  wonderful world in which we live! As always I'm your humble science communicator the great Orbax, coming to you from the Department of Physics at the University of Guelph and I'd like to welcome you to our January 2025 Star Gazing Guide.
*coughing, thumbs up*

Well it's a new year but we still have the same incredible skies. After the solstice last month our evening hours are decreasing in length with sunset going from 4:55 p.m. on the 1st to 5:31 p.m. on the 31st and sunrise dropping back from 7:54 a.m. on the 1st to 7:38 a.m. on the 31st.

But don't worry, this means we still have 14 hours of darkness to explore.
So what are we looking for this month?
Well we take a deep dive into some familiar winter asterisms, discover a planetary parade and we try to spy on the wolf Moon.
All this and more will we just take some time... to look up.

Okay well who remembers what an asterism is?

While there's 88 constellations agreed upon by modern astronomers worldwide it's often the simpler patterns that we notice when we look up into that speckled blanket of darkness.
An asterism is a group of stars that form a quickly identifiable pattern and may contain a portion of one or multiple constellations.

If you look to the North at night, or in the early morning hours, this time of year there's a few asterisms that jump right out at you. One that we've spoken about before is the big W in the sky. This pattern is Cassiopeia and is both an asterism and a constellation. As a matter of fact not only is it a modern constellation but it's also one of the original 48 constellations catalogued by Ptolemy in the 2nd century AD. Joining Cassiopeia in that region of sky is another asterism that we know as the Big Dipper. The Big Dipper is a pattern of seven stars that is part of the constellation Ursa Major, the Greater Bear.

Once you spot the Big Dipper you can use a special trick to spot two other major stars.

For the first trick this time of year it needs to be after midnight. If you follow the stars of the Big Dipper's handle it will lead you directly to Arcturus in the constellation Bootes. Arcturus is the brightest star in the northern celestial hemisphere and is actually the fourth brightest star in our sky.

For the Big Dipper's second trick you won't have to stay up so late.

Find the Dipper and now identify the the two stars at the front of the cup Merak and Dubhe. Extend the line joining these two stars for about five times the distance between them and the first bright star you'll come across is Polaris, the North Star.

Polaris is our current pole star and if you're facing Polaris you know that you're facing north... just by being able to spot the Big Dipper!

Now Polaris is part of the constellation Ursa Minor, the Lesser Bear, but is also part of an asterism known as a Little Dipper.

Here's another fun fact. These three asterisms; Cassiopeia, the Big Dipper and the Little Dipper, from our viewpoint never set below the horizon... whether it's day or night.
These are called circumpolar asterisms or constellations and there'll be more on that later.

In late January and into February we'll have an opportunity to see a unique celestial phenomena.

For the last few months we've been talking about the ecliptic, that imaginary line in the sky that the planets more or less appear on. Just last month we saw three!
Venus, Jupiter and Saturn!

But this month there'll be six planets along that line creating a large planetary alignment or what some call a planetary parade. A planetary alignment doesn't actually mean that all the planets form a perfect straight line in space. While the planets orbit the Sun different orbital speeds cause the planets to appear in different positions along the ecliptic from our vantage point here on Earth.

When several planets happen to be gathered in their orbital paths along one side of the Sun they can be observed to all lie along the ecliptic in a tight batch and while this is a unique occurrence it's ultimately not that rare.
We get large planetary alignments almost every year, but lucky for us this one happens to not only occur at night when we can actually see it but also in the few hours just after sunset!
Our best viewing this month will be on January 21st when just about an hour after sunset (and going East to West) Mars, Jupiter, Uranus, Neptune, Venus, and Saturn will lie along the ecliptic.
Now Mars, Jupiter, Venus and Saturn will all be visible with the unaided eye but if you happen to have high powered binoculars or a telescope you may be able to see Uranus or Neptune.
Now if you miss the 21st don't worry, it should be visible for a few days around that time, and in February a 7th planet joins in when Mercury gets in the mix!
Good luck junior scientists!

Our full Moon this month is on January 13th just after Sunset.
Settlers call the January Full Moon the Wolf Moon for the hungry calls of the wolves they heard this time of year.
The January Full Moon will be quite high in altitude throughout the night similar to the Chief Moon in December.
This high Moon visible through the long nightsled the Ojibwe of the Great Lakes to honour silence with this January full moon as Gichi-manidoo Giizis, the “Great Spirit Moon”. This name was captured in literature in Longfellow's The Song of Hiawatha. The Cree speak of the trees cracking under extreme cold by calling this the "Frost Exploding Moon" while Mi'kmaw name this the Tom Cod moon for the fish that swim upstream to spawn.

Well junior scientists, ancient humans may not have had the binoculars, telescopes and star tracking apps that many of you have access to but you both still share something in common.
You both looked upon the same stars millions of light years away and saw patterns in the sky.
Patterns soaked in wonder.

And all you had to do was take some time... to look up.
We'll see you next month junior scientists and don't forget to have a science-tastic day!
Special thanks to Royal City Science's own planetary geochemist Dr Glynis Perrett for her help preparing our Star Gazing Guide and the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada.