JANUARY is a great month for stargazing and there’s plenty of celestial events still to come.
We’ve rounded up some of the stargazing opportunities you won’t want to miss including spotting the Full Wolf Moon.
1
The Morning Star
Venus has disappeared from the night sky recently but it will reappear in mid January as the ‘Morning Star’.
The planet got this nickname because it will look like the brightest star in the dawn sky at this time of year.
At the end of the month Venus will be visible in the morning sky for about an hour before the sunrise.
Look towards the eastern horizon.
Most read in Tech
Full Wolf Moon
Watch out for the first Full Moon of 2022 on January 17.
The Full Moon at this time of year is called a Wolf Moon.
The name Full Wolf Moon is associated with early Native American tribes who observed hungry wolves howling outside their camps around the same time of year as this phenomenon.
The lunar event is also referred to as the Moon After Yule and the Old Moon.
Moon meeting Mars
On January 29, the crescent Moon and Mars will rise together in the southeastern sky just after 5am.
Mars will look like a reddish dot to the left of the Moon.
The planet will be so close to the Moon that both will be visible in a pair of binoculars.
Uranus
Uranus is notoriously hard to spot but it should be observable with binoculars throughout January 2022.
Look for the small greenish blue dot in the evening sky.
It should be visible in the southern Aries constellation.
Useful Stargazing apps
Sometimes smartphones can be useful to point out the location of constellations and planets in the night sky.
You can try downloading one of these apps to point yourself in the right direction.
Make sure you give your eyes a break from your phone afterwards though, stargazing is best when your eyes have adjusted to the dark.
Stargazing apps for Android and iPhone include: SkyView Lite, Star Tracker and Star Walk 2.
Some apps are free but a lot of them charge so it depends if you want to put up with adverts or not.
It’s advisable to read the reviews of an app and look at how many people have rated it before downloading.
What is a meteor?
In other news, Donald Trump looks set to launch his Truth Social app next month.
Bitcoin has been predicted to crash in 2022 and the value of the cryptocurrency fell dramatically this week.
And, Cadillac has revealed a futuristic electric car concept with a loveseat design inside.
