Planet Scenes January 2025
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January 15: Comet ATLAS and Venus/Saturn/Neptune I was finally able to see Comet C/2024 G3 (ATLAS) in bright twilight, although my image is not very good LOL. Venus continues to encroach upon Saturn. |
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January 13: Full Moon Setting and an Occultation of Mars Nearly full Moon setting over the snow-covered fields northwest of my house on the morning of January 13, 2025. That evening we were treated to an impressive spectacle, the occultation of Mars by the nearly full Moon. |
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January 9: Venus, Saturn, Neptune A 10 day old Moon brightened our skies but we still obtained a nice view of three planets in the evening sky; in particular, it is now evident that Venus is rapidly gaining on Saturn and is poised to overtake the Bringer of Old Age in the next ten days. |
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January 8: Comet C/2024 G3 ATLAS There is a very small chance to see a bright comet from the northern hemisphere in the next week or two if it brightens dramatically ~ this chart shows its position in the evening immediately after sunset, with the angular distances on the chart indicating the separation from the Sun on each evening. Obviously, these are extremely small separations so it will only be visible if extremely bright. |
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January 7: Mercury in the Morning Mercury is at the tail end of a very favorable morning apparition, now slowly sinking back toward the Sun ~ compare its position here with that of December 23. The fleet messenger has moved all the way through Ophiuchus and into Sagittarius in those two weeks. |
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January 5: Sunspot Activity The Sun continues to be very active, at the moment with numerous sunspots and groups across its face. None of them are particularly large, however, so I wasn't able to get very good resolution on them, also partly due to my difficulty in getting good focus with my Celestron C8. |
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January 4: Mars Retrograding in Cancer Mars continues to brighten and increase in size as it moves westward back toward Gemini where it will arrive at its opposition point on January 16, 2025. We see Mars now more than halfway from its stationary point to opposition. |
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January 3: Telephoto Moons & Venus The Moon just passed Venus earlier in the day and is now positioned a few degrees to the upper left, or to the east (using equatorial coordinates), or to the southeast (using ecliptical coordinates) of Venus. |
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January 2: Telephoto Moons Perfect evening with a crescent Moon plus planets bright and dim beckoned to all to look toward the west! These views of the other half of our double planet system were obtained with a 400 mm and a 300 mm lens. Super cool to see the sunlit peaks of mountains at the south polar region separated from the main part of the crescent! |
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January 1: Venus, Saturn, Neptune A cool evening with transparent skies and rolling clouds invited me out to get some pictures on New Year's night. A thin crescent Moon adorned the low western horizon in twilight, with brilliant Venus and Saturn in Aquarius, and finally Neptune in Pisces to the upper left of Saturn. The bad news is we also saw a pair of starlink trains blinking across the sky. |
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