There's a lot to look forward to in the year of skywatching.
The sky events that will take place this year are listed here. As the events draw closer, the Night Sky column will provide more coverage.
The Venus show is in February and March.
The SkySafari app has an image.
The most brilliant of all the planets will be visible in the predawn sky, shining low in the southeast sky a couple of hours before sunrise. On February 13th, Venus will appear as a crescent phase through small telescopes and binoculars. On March 20th, it will have waned to a half-moon phase and become the first day of spring. The moon will engage it in a beautiful tableau on February 26.
The God of War and the Lord of the Rings meet.
The SkySafari app has an image.
We'll be treated to a rather tight conjunction this morning, as Mars is less than a degree below Saturn. This naked-eye sight will be striking because the two worlds are almost the same brightness and color contrast. 7 degrees to their will make Venus sparkle. It's worth setting your alarm clock for 5 o'clock.
Late April/ early May: a comet?
The sky map shows the view from New York City. The SkySafari app has an image.
On April 21st, the comet will pass within 28.6 million miles of the sun and could possibly be bright enough to be seen with bare eyes. It will be low in the west-northwest sky after sunset in the spring. We will have to wait and see.
The SkySafari app has an image.
During the last half of April, watch as Jupiter approaches Venus from the east-southeast horizon. On April 27 a crescent moon will make its last appearance in the night sky before it sets in the morning, creating a spectacular sight in the dawn twilight as Jupiter and Venus are separated by 3 degrees. How would the skywatchers have interpreted this?
On April 30th, a double planet will call attention to all early risers as Jupiter and Venus appear side by side. Jupiter and Venus were separated by only a small degree. Venus is six times brighter than Jupiter, and it will glow with a lustrous magnitude of -2.
A partial eclipse of the sun will take place on April 30.
There will be a partial solar eclipse on April 30, 2022. Fred Espenak is a NASA scientist.
The moon's dark shadow cone will pass below the South Pole and miss the Earth completely.
A partial eclipse of the moon will be visible in a swath of the South Pacific Ocean and southern and western parts of South America.
The greatest eclipse takes place over the South Pacific Ocean, which is 300 miles northwest of Yelcho Base. The sun will barely clear the west- northwest horizon with nearly two-thirds of its diameter hidden behind the moon. The sun's light gave the horizon haze the appearance of a slice of cantaloupe melon.
A total eclipse of the moon will take place on May 14-15.
During a lunar eclipse, the moon turns red as it passes through the Earth's shadow. The image is from NASA.
Most of the Americas are almost perfectly timed for this event. The moon will be completely obscured by the east-southeastern horizon as it rises along the Pacific coast of Oregon and Washington State and across much of western and north-central Canada.
Unfortunately for most of Alaska, the eclipse ends before the moonrise. Across the Atlantic Ocean, the moonset will affect much of Africa and Europe, while central Europe will experience the drama of totality as the Moon sets. Totality will last for an hour and 24 minutes.
The lower part of the moon will be brighter than the upper part during the total phase because it will pass south of the center of the Earth's shadow. It's hard to say in advance how the moon will look because of the chaotic state of the atmosphere.
There is a chance of a slow- moving shower of meteors on May 30-31.
73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann and its fragment can be seen in the view of a high-magnification telescope. The image is from the website sloth.com.
The most dramatic sky event of the year could come during the night of May 30-31, when our planet sweeps through a dense cloud of meteoroids expelled by the break of the nucleus of a small comet.
A brief display of slow- moving meteors, commonly known as "shooting stars", could result from this unusual cosmic interaction.
There are five planets in the second half of June.
The SkySafari app has an image.
All five naked-eye planets will be visible at the same time in a line that will span the eastern and southeastern morning twilight sky during the last two weeks of June. It's amazing that they will all be aligned in their correct order out from the sun.
The moon will be waning from a gibbous to a slender crescent phase and will visit each planet on specific mornings.
July 13 is the biggest full moon of the year.
The International Space Station has a view of the Super Pink Moon of April 26, 2021. The image is from NASA.
The moon is full at 2:38 pm. It will arrive at its closest point to the Earth in 2022, at a distance of more than 300,000 km. The next few days will see a large range in ocean tides.
The shower peaks on August 12.
The image was taken in West Virginia in August of 2021. The image is from NASA/Bill Ingalls.
The annual summer performance of the Perseid meteor shower will be hampered by the light of a full moon.
The opposition of Jupiter is perihelic.
Earth and Jupiter are aligned on the same side of the solar system during opposition. The image is from NASA/JPL-Caltech.
The largest planet in our solar system will make its closest approach to Earth since October 1963, when it was 367.4 million miles away. The big planet will be very bright against the dim stars of the constellation.
There was a partial eclipse of the sun.
There will be a partial solar eclipse in October of 2022. Fred Espenak is a NASA scientist.
The moon's shadow is mostly on the north polar regions of Earth. It will be visible from an eastern slice of Greenland and all of Iceland, as well as most of Europe (except Portugal and the western and southern portions of Spain), northeast Africa and in varying extent over much of western and central Asia. One of the wealthiest cities in Russia is located on the West Siberia Plain, where the greatest eclipse occurs.
The total eclipse of the moon will take place on Nov. 8.
The western half of North America, the Hawaiian Islands, eastern Asia, Indonesia, New Zealand and the eastern half of Australia are favored by this eclipse. The moon will set along the Atlantic Seaboard as it begins to emerge from a total eclipse. The moon will pass to the north of the center of the shadow, which will be the same location as in May. We might expect a moderately dark eclipse, with a brownish hue across the lower part of the moon, contrasted by a brighter red upper rim.
There will be an "M&M" night.
The SkySafari app has an image.
The full moon will pass very close to Mars, hiding it for parts of North America, which will evoke a question that will be repeated many times that night.
The sun will set at midnight and set at sunrise as Mars arrives at opposition. It will be shining at a magnitude -1.9, making it the most powerful star in the night sky.
The peak of the meteor shower is December 13-14.
The sky above a campfire at Assateague Island National Seashore in Maryland is filled with fireballs during the Geminid meteor shower. Jeff Berkes snapped this photo at 2:30 a.m. on December 14, 2018, in the middle of the night. Jeff Berkes has an image on his Facebook.
Another low-light. The last quarter moon will cause the best of the annual meteor showers to be overshadowed by the next one.
Joe is an instructor and lecturer at New York's Hayden Planetarium. He writes about astronomy in publications. Follow us on social media.
