This January, See A ‘Planet Parade’ In The Night Sky

IRA FLATOW: This is Science Friday. I’m Ira Flatow.

For the rest of the hour, I’m asking you to look up, and no, not at the ceiling but at the night sky, like I did this week where I saw an awesome display of planets. If you like looking at the night sky, this is a great month to do it, and here to tell us what we can see is a guy who’s always– well, he always has his head in the sky. Dean Regas, astronomer and host of the podcast Looking Up with Dean Regas. Welcome back, Dean.

DEAN REGAS: Oh, happy to be here.

IRA FLATOW: Let’s talk about this being a great month. The flashiest event people are really talking about the so-called planet parade. Fill us in.

DEAN REGAS: Oh yeah, this is some good marketing. Planet parade sounds really great. We’re going to have lots of planets up in the sky. We’ve got Venus. We’ve got Saturn. We’ve got Neptune, Uranus, Jupiter, and Mars all visible. Sounds wonderful, doesn’t it?

But a little bit, bringing people down to earth. Six planets sounds good, but four the ones you can see with the naked eye. But Venus and Saturn are going to be right next to each other in the evening sky right after dark. So Venus, incredibly bright. Looks suspiciously bright, like a plane or a UFO, and Saturn will be faint but next to it. And then on the other side of the sky, kind of bordered by the south-southeast is going to be Jupiter and Mars kind of spread out a little bit.

Uranus and Neptune, you need a telescope to see. You’re going to see it on social media with all six of them in the charts and everything. But yeah, I’d say stick with the four. Planet parade sounds pretty good to me.

IRA FLATOW: And I was like you. I thought I was looking at some airplanes, and they weren’t moving. So is this a rare event for so many of them to be visible at once?

DEAN REGAS: We’re kind of in the cycle where, in the wintertime, we’re getting this a little bit more often, but it’s really just all the planets are on their own tracks going around the sun at different speeds. And so they tend to line up along this plane called the ecliptic. This is kind of the plane of our solar system. So planets like to line up a lot. Seeing all these in one place is pretty cool.

And then in case you’re wondering where Mercury is– we haven’t talked about that. That’s going to come around at the end of February and kind of join the parade for a little bit, but that one’s always tough to see too.

IRA FLATOW: And how do you tell whether it’s a planet or it’s a really bright star?

DEAN REGAS: Yeah, a really good question because some of the planets stand out. Like Venus and Jupiter are incredibly bright, brighter than any of the stars. The other ones are a little bit tougher. So Mars is pretty bright right now because we’re at closest approach to Mars for the year, and so that just looks this red, bright star. And Saturn’s very faint, so it looks kind of just a normal yellow star out there.

But the trick that we always try to tell people is planets twinkle less than stars, so you look for things that aren’t twinkling as much. They still will twinkle a little bit but not as much.

IRA FLATOW: Love it. Yeah, a little more of a disk shape than a point in the sky.

DEAN REGAS: Exactly right.

IRA FLATOW: Let’s move on to another event that’s getting a lot of buzz, and I’m talking about the ATLAS comet. What’s the deal with this?

DEAN REGAS: Oh, man, this sounds great. Again, this is the brightest comet we’ve seen in a long time. Its brightness is about as bright as the planet Venus, and so that’s hyping up pretty good.

Big, big, big problem with this comet is the average person’s not going to see it. Which you’re thinking, well, wait a second. It’s bright as Venus. I should see it. It is right next to the sun. So from your view, it’s up during the daytime, so you need special observing techniques and equipment to actually see this comet.

So is it going to be visible to the naked eye? Highly unlikely. I’m a little worried about people trying to stare at the sun too much.

IRA FLATOW: Yeah, this binoculars or something, really bad idea.

DEAN REGAS: Yeah. So this comet, it’s got a lot of hype. It’s got another good press agent, but I think this one’s one I’m going to pass on looking for it because it’s not going to be easy.

IRA FLATOW: So you’re saying it’s never going to be visible in the night sky?

DEAN REGAS: It’s going to be visible later on. So Southern Hemisphere, it’s more visible from that region. For us in the Northern Hemisphere, it’s going to be really tough because it’s going to fade probably pretty fast as it moves away from the sun. So we do have a chance, maybe at the end of January, to get a glimpse of it. But when it comes to comets, the rule of thumb is they are fickle beasts, and you never know what they’re going to do.

IRA FLATOW: I don’t recognize the name of this one. It must not come by very often.

DEAN REGAS: Yeah, this is one that astronomers just computed the orbit to be around 160,000 years. So comets live these interesting lives where they’re mostly way, way, way out from the sun, and they’re frozen little ice balls. But when they drift towards the sun, they heat up, create these tails, and that’s when you see them. So this comet is going to make a quick skirting of the inner solar system and head back to obscurity for another 160,000 years.

IRA FLATOW: When we pass through the dust of a comet, we get meteor showers, right? Do we have any meteor showers coming up?

DEAN REGAS: Well, we’ve got some minor ones in the winter time. The next really good one that I’ve got kind of my eye on is the Lyrids. That’s in April, kind of late April, April 21, 22, somewhere around there. That’s when we’re flying through this comet debris, and every year, those creating a lot of shooting stars. So that’s the next one I’ve kind of got my eye on because the moon phase will be favorable. So no moon around. That means more chances of seeing fainter meteors. So Lyrids is the one I got circled.

IRA FLATOW: And if you’re lucky enough to have a telescope or a nice pair of binoculars, what can you see in the night sky now that would be really cool?

DEAN REGAS: I think the big thing right now that’s shining, along with the planets, are the brightest stars in the year, basically. So the winter sky has the brightest stars. 8 of the top 20 brightest stars in the whole sky are visible every night. It’s this area of the sky kind of by Orion. So you think of the belt stars of Orion, those three stars in a row. There’s plenty of other bright stars around it, which some call a circle, some call a hexagon, but I call it the winter football because it’s shaped like a football and I’ve got playoffs on my brain.

But you’ve got Orion out there with the Orion Nebula, which is an awesome sight to see through a telescope. You got the Seven Sisters, the Pleiades star cluster, which make a nice sight. There’s another one that I want to throw out there to challenge folks called M35. It’s this open star cluster in the constellation Gemini. It’s not visible to the naked eye, but when you find it with a telescope, it is awesome.

IRA FLATOW: You’ve got to have a clear sky on that one.

DEAN REGAS: Absolutely. Yeah, the darker the sky, the better. And I hate to say it, the bigger the telescope, the better too.

IRA FLATOW: Have you found that the haze from those terrible forest fires in Los Angeles or other places have been getting in the way of seeing the stars and the planets?

DEAN REGAS: I think a little bit, especially for folks on the west side of the country, that they are kind of affecting this. And they’re also affecting a lot of the communication sites, like the Jet Propulsion Laboratory there in California is having some issues with– they had to evacuate a lot of places. So we’re getting a few reports about that. The smoke hasn’t drifted extensively yet that we’ve noticed, at least here in the Midwest.

IRA FLATOW: And what about these thousands of Starlink satellites that SpaceX and others are putting up? Starlink has now 7,000. They’re aiming for 12,000. China is competing with them now, and they’re trying to orbit up to 15,000 eventually. Are they affecting what people see in the night sky?

DEAN REGAS: Wow. Yeah, talk about a controversial subject. This is something that everybody’s got kind of an opinion on in the astronomical world. Astronomers, by and large, dislike this because the more satellites up in the sky, the more times their telescopes and cameras are going to pick up the satellites when they want to pick up things that are much farther away.

It hasn’t been a large-scale disruption of scientific research yet, but it’s definitely on people’s minds because thousands and thousands of satellites create thousands of reflective objects and also could potentially lead to thousands of things falling from the sky. So this competition between the countries, there’s not a lot of collaboration. That’s the other problem. So everybody that can send a satellite up can do it.

IRA FLATOW: Right. All right, let’s look a little bit into the future for other big astronomical events that you’re excited about. Any lunar or solar eclipses coming up this year?

DEAN REGAS: Yeah, we’ve got two of them in March, which is pretty exciting. The bigger one of the two, I think, is going to be the total lunar eclipse. That’s going to be on the night of March 13 into March 14. So this is when the moon goes into the shadow of the Earth and turns that eerie blood-red color. This is going to be pretty awesome because it’s going to be visible across the entire United States. Almost everywhere will be able to see that total lunar eclipse that night.

And for people that saw this total solar eclipse back in 2024, this isn’t quite the same deal. It’s not as mind-blowingly awesome as others. So yeah, this total lunar eclipse is going to be kind of a long affair. It takes several hours to go through the partial stages in totality. The only problem with totality for this total lunar eclipse in March is going to be the timing. It’ll be 2:26 to 3:31 AM Eastern Time, but might as well stay up late for it. It’s going to be cool.

IRA FLATOW: Yeah. And what’s the best way to look at it? You don’t need a telescope for this, right, or binoculars?

DEAN REGAS: Absolutely not. For a total lunar eclipse, you just want to sit back and watch the show. It’s one of those like it’s a chill astronomical event because it takes so long. And my advice is when you get to the totality part, you can watch it, and then have some friends and family out there. Get some drinks. Then every time you look back at the moon during totality, it’s slightly different. The shade slowly changes and makes a really cool sight.

IRA FLATOW: Dean, you briefly mentioned a partial solar eclipse this year. Let’s talk about that.

DEAN REGAS: Oh yeah, so this is going to be on March 29. So we’ve got that total lunar eclipse on the 13th and 14th and then the partial solar eclipse on the 29th of March. This one is only going to be visible from the extreme northeastern part of the United States where just a little bit of the sun will be blocked out by the moon. So no total eclipse for the United States on that one, but still something cool to see if you’re in the Northeast.

IRA FLATOW: Yeah, I love when that happens and then you have the leaves and you see all those little suns on the ground.

DEAN REGAS: Yeah, absolutely. So if you’re in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine, that’s the best spots to see it. And even then, it’s only going to be about halfway eclipse, the sun will be. But again, I’m heading up there to see it, so I can’t wait.

IRA FLATOW: Half is better than nothing, right?

DEAN REGAS: Oh, man, just the rush of seeing an eclipse of any kind is really cool.

IRA FLATOW: And so it’s going to be a busy year. Looks like there is a total solar eclipse coming up, what, next year, if you want to plan for that?

DEAN REGAS: Absolutely. I mean, it’s on my calendar. By the way, Ira, I have eclipses on my calendar through 2079, so I’m good. I know where I’m going to be. But 2026 is the next total solar eclipse. And for people that saw the one in 2024, you’re probably hooked. And the places to see it in 2026 are Iceland and Spain. So take your pick. I’m thinking Spain, but I’m going to start planning very soon.

IRA FLATOW: Well, we’ll plan along with you. Dean, thank you, as always, for being our sky guide at the nighttime sky.

DEAN REGAS: Absolutely, and keep looking up.

IRA FLATOW: Dean Regas, astronomer and host of the podcast Looking Up with Dean Regas. Dean is based in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Copyright © 2025 Science Friday Initiative. All rights reserved. Science Friday transcripts are produced on a tight deadline by 3Play Media. Fidelity to the original aired/published audio or video file might vary, and text might be updated or amended in the future. For the authoritative record of Science Friday’s programming, please visit the original aired/published recording. For terms of use and more information, visit our policies pages at http://www.sciencefriday.com/about/policies/