Rise early for a total lunar eclipse on the 21st
The maps show the sky at 21:00 GMT on the 1st, 20:00 on the 16th and 19:00 on the 31st. An arrow depicts the motion of Mars. (Click on map to enlarge)
Any month that has the glorious constellation of Orion in our southern evening sky is a good one for night sky aficionados. Add one of the best meteor showers of the year, a total eclipse of the Moon, a meeting between the two brightest planets and a brace of space exploration firsts and we should have a month to remember
Orion rises in the east as darkness falls and climbs well into view in the south-east by our star map times. Its two leading stars are the blue-white supergiant Rigel at Orion’s knee and the contrasting red supergiant Betelgeuse at his opposite shoulder – both are much more massive and larger than our Sun and around 100,000 times more luminous.
Below the middle of the three stars of Orion’s Belt hangs his Sword where the famous and fuzzy Orion Nebula may be spied by the naked eye on a good night and is usually easy to see through binoculars. One of the most-studied objects in the entire sky, it lies 1,350 light years away and consists of a glowing region of gas and dust in which new stars and planets are coalescing under gravity.
The Belt slant up towards Taurus with the bright orange giant Aldebaran and the Pleiades cluster as the latter stands 58° high on Edinburgh’s meridian. Carry the line of the Belt downwards to Orion’s main dog, Canis Major, with Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky. His other dog, Canis Minor, lies to the east of Orion and is led by Procyon which forms an almost-equilateral triangle with Sirius and Betelgeuse – our so-called Winter Triangle.
The Moon stands about 15° above Procyon when it is eclipsed during the morning hours of the 21st. The event begins at 02:36 when the Moon lies high in our south-western sky, to the left of Castor and Pollux in Gemini, and its left edge starts to enter the lighter outer shadow of the Earth, the penumbra.
Little darkening may be noticeable until a few minutes before it encounters the darker umbra at 03:34. Between 04:41 and 05:46 the Moon is in total eclipse within the northern half of the umbra and may glow with a reddish hue as it is lit by sunlight refracting through the Earth’s atmosphere. The Moon finally leaves the umbra at 06:51 and the penumbra at 07:48, by which time the Moon is only 5° high above our west-north-western horizon in the morning twilight.
This eclipse occurs with the Moon near its perigee or closest point to the Earth so it appears slightly larger in the sky than usual and may be dubbed a supermoon. Because the Moon becomes reddish during totality, there is a recent fad for calling it a Blood Moon, a term which has even less of an astronomical pedigree than supermoon. Combine the two to get the frankly ridiculous description of this as a Super Blood Moon.
Sunrise/sunset times for Edinburgh change from 08:44/15:49 on the 1st to 08:10/16:43 on the 31st. New moon early on the 6th, UK time, brings a partial solar eclipse for areas around the northern Pacific. First quarter on the 14th is followed by full moon and the lunar eclipse on the 21st and last quarter on the 27th.
The Quadrantids meteor shower is active until the 12th but is expected to peak sharply at about 03:00 on the 4th. Its meteors, the brighter ones leaving trains in their wake, diverge from a radiant point that lies low in the north during the evening but follows the Plough high into our eastern sky before dawn. With no moonlight to hinder observations this year, as many as 80 or more meteors per hour might be counted under ideal conditions.
Mars continues as our only bright evening planet though it fades from magnitude 0.5 to 0.9 as it recedes. Tracking through Pisces and well up in the south at nightfall, it stands above the Moon on the 12th. Our maps show it sinking in the south-west and it sets in the west before midnight.
Venus, its brilliance dimming only slightly from magnitude -4.5 to -4.3, stands furthest west of the Sun (47°) on the 6th and is low down (and getting lower) in our south-eastern predawn sky. Look for it below and left of the waning Moon on the 1st with the second-brightest planet, Jupiter at magnitude -1.8, 18° below and to Venus’s left. As Venus tracks east-south-eastwards against the stars, it sweeps 2.4° north of Jupiter in an impressive conjunction on the morning of the 22nd while the 31st finds it 8° left of Jupiter with the earthlit Moon directly between them.
Saturn, magnitude 0.6, might be glimpsed at the month’s end when it rises in the south-east 70 minutes before sunrise but Mercury is lost from sight is it heads towards superior conjunction on the Sun’s far side on the 30th.
China hopes that its Chang’e 4 spacecraft will be the first to touch down on the Moon’s far side, possibly on the 3rd. Launched on December 7 and named for the Chinese goddess of the Moon, it needs a relay satellite positioned beyond the Moon to communicate with Earth.
Meantime, NASA’s New Horizons mission is due to fly within 3,500 km of a small object a record 6.5 billion km away when our New Year is barely six hours old. Little is known about its target, dubbed Ultima Thule, other than that it is around 30 km wide and takes almost 300 years to orbit the Sun in the Kuiper Belt of icy worlds in the distant reaches of our Solar System.
Diary for 2019 January
1st 06h New Horizons flyby of Ultima Thule
1st 22h Moon 1.3° N of Venus
2nd 06h Saturn in conjunction with Sun
3rd 05h Earth closest to Sun (147,100,000 km)
3rd 08h Moon 3° N of Jupiter
4th 03h Peak of Quadrantids meteor shower
6th 01h New moon and partial solar eclipse
6th 05h Venus furthest W of Sun (47°)
12th 20h Moon 5° S of Mars
14th 07h First quarter
17th 19h Moon 1.6° N of Aldebaran
21st 05h Full moon and total lunar eclipse
21st 16h Moon 0.3° S of Praesepe
22nd 06h Venus 2.4° N of Jupiter
23rd 02h Moon 2.5° N of Regulus
27th 21h Last quarter
30th 03h Mercury in superior conjunction
31st 00h Moon 2.8° N of Jupiter
31st 18h Moon 0.1° N of Venus
Alan Pickup