The Night Sky
Don’t miss your chance this month!
We are in for a treat this month. Get your diary out now, find the date night of 20/21st January and make a note AMAZING SUPERMOON ECLIPSE TONIGHT!!! The slight problem is that totality begins at 4.41 in the morning and lasts for about an hour. So If we have a clear night and If you are not too tired, it will be the most spectacular lunar eclipse. An alternative is to wake up early before work to catch the end of totality at 5.30am! The eclipse is caused by the Earth’s shadow moving across our particularly close moon in those early hours. As the light passes from the sun through our atmosphere and hits the moon, many of the wavelengths of light are stripped away, apart from red, and that’s why the moon will look blood red! Look high in the West. You may remember that I highlighted a previous eclipse in July and you might think that they are common but the next total lunar eclipse is in May 2022! So let’s hope for clear skies.
The Dog Star
January heralds the coming of the very dominant hourglass-shaped Orion that I described this time last year. If you follow the three stars that make up Orion’s belt down towards the horizon you will see the brightest star in the sky, Sirius.( It will continue to be the brightest star in our night sky for the next 200,000 years). Also known as the Dog Star, it sits in the constellation Canis Major or the Great Dog. It is one of the most famous stars in the sky in terms of world cultures. The name Sirius means ‘scorching’ and its brightness can only be outshone by a planet. It is so bright because it is one of our sun’s closest neighbours and double the size.
One mystery surrounding Sirius is that in the very distant past, the natives of Mali in West Africa named a companion star ‘Po’ next to Sirius and even used Po to measure their ritual periods of time by giving it a 50-year orbit. It wasn’t until 1862 that Sirius was discovered to be a ‘double star’ and that it had a much smaller star orbiting it …..every 50 years. How they managed to discover that is still a complete mystery as it is invisible to the naked eye. Sirius was also very important in the Egyptian calendar as its first appearance before sunrise marked the time of the yearly rising of the Nile. This in turn mobilised famers as it was vital to their crops and wealth. Interestingly, the familiar expression ‘the dog days of summer’ was first coined by the Romans as Sirius appeared at the hottest time of the year and was linked to heat, drought, fever and mad dogs.
If you are out planet- hunting this month, then Mars is the only real target in the evening sky at the moment, setting in the West about midnight. Shining with its red tint it is unmistakable. If you are an early riser, then you can spot Jupiter and Venus and a Crescent Moon on the last few days of the month looking South East.
Finally, a historic moment is about to occur. The New Horizons’ spacecraft will pass a very distant object in a region called the Kuiper Belt on 1st January. It will be a billion miles beyond Puto that it has already visited in 2015. This flyby will be the most distant in our history of space exploration!
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