A new night-sky guide published by Louth Weather outlines the main astronomical events taking place this month, focusing on what can realistically be seen without exaggerated claims or clickbait headlines.<\/p>\n
The guide provides a clear and practical rundown of predictable night-sky events, avoiding references to so-called \u201crare supermoons\u201d or dramatic planetary line-ups, and instead explaining what observers are actually likely to see with the naked eye, binoculars or a small telescope.<\/p>\n
For January 2026, the planets Mercury, Venus and Mars will not be visible, as they are too close to the sun. However, there is still plenty of interest throughout the month.<\/p>\n
The month began with a full moon on Saturday, January 3, when the moon rose as the sun set. Skywatchers may also have noticed a bright object close to the moon, which was the planet Jupiter. The same day marked Earth\u2019s perihelion \u2014 the point in the year when our planet is closest to the sun due to its slightly elliptical orbit.<\/p>\n
The Quadrantid meteor shower also peaked around this time, although the brightness of the full moon meant that only the brightest meteors were visible.<\/p>\n
On Sunday, January 4, the moon passed close to the Beehive Cluster, a star cluster best viewed using binoculars.<\/p>\n
Jupiter reaches its closest point to Earth for 2026 on Friday, January 9, making it a particularly good opportunity to view the planet and some of its brightest moons with binoculars or a small telescope.<\/p>\n
Other notable dates for the rest of the month include:<\/p>\n
Tuesday, January 20: A crescent moon visible after sunset<\/p>\n
Thursday, January 22: The moon appears close to Saturn, with Neptune also nearby. Saturn\u2019s rings are currently nearly edge-on to Earth, making them more difficult to see<\/p>\n
Tuesday, January 27: The moon pairs with the Pleiades star cluster, also known as the Seven Sisters<\/p>\n
Friday, January 30: The moon appears close to Jupiter once again<\/p>\n
The guide is intended as the first in a monthly series highlighting predictable night-sky events, while noting that phenomena such as aurora displays cannot be reliably forecast.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A new night-sky guide published by Louth Weather outlines the main astronomical events taking place this month, focusing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":234126,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[61,60,41886,82,247],"class_list":["post-234125","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-katie-finnegan","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234125","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=234125"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234125\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/234126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=234125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=234125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=234125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}