Easily recognisable

Ken Kennedy, of Dundee Astonomical Society, tells us what we can expect to see in January’s night sky.

“The glorious winter constellations cluster towards the south in January,” he says. “Easily recognisable and bunched together are Orion, Gemini, Auriga and Taurus, all with so much to offer to the observer with or without optical aid.

“Orion is universally recognised with the line of three stars forming his belt, the bright stars, Betelgeuse, above the belt and Rigel below the belt and his sword hanging at an angle from the belt. Betelgeuse can be seen as being distinctly orange in colour, especially compared to the brilliant white of Rigel.

“Despite being only around 10 million years old, Betelgeuse is in the final stage of its life having rapidly used most of its hydrogen. It has swollen in size and, if placed where our sun is, it would extend out almost to Jupiter. Within a million years Betelgeuse will explode as a supernova and for a time will be a spectacular sight in our night, and day, sky.

“With a pair of binoculars or a small telescope have a look at the centre of Orion’s sword and you will see a fuzzy patch which is the Great Orion Nebula, a place of star formation. Hot young stars embedded in gas and dust make the surrounding material glow. Four of these stars which form the Trapezium Cluster can be seen in a gap in the nebula which shows how these stars are clearing the gas and dust and one day many others will emerge to show a fine star cluster.

“Above Orion lies Taurus with the eye of the bull marked by orange Aldebaran, another swollen giant star, but not as large as Betelgeuse. Not far above Aldebaran is the well-known star cluster the Pleiades or Seven Sisters. When the star cluster in Orion emerges it will probably outshine the Pleiades by a considerable margin.

“Aldebaran marks, but is not a member of, the open star cluster, the Hyades, which forms a V-shape, the ends of the V pointing towards Auriga and Gemini. With an age of 625 million years the Hyades cluster is older than the Pleiades and the stars show this by having drifted away from the original tight cluster.

“What I call the New Year meteor shower, the Quadrantids, occurs from January 1 to 6 with a maximum of activity at 9pm on the 3rd. Because of the time of year, this tends to be a poorly observed shower but, at maximum, there can be more than 80 meteors per hour.

“Unfortunately, this year the moon is just past full on the 3rd and this will significantly reduce the number of meteors which can be seen.

“Mercury will make an appearance low in the south-west before sunrise until mid-month. It passes close to Saturn on January 13. Venus will not be visible during January.

“Mars is low towards the south before sunrise and is close to Jupiter on the 7th. It still presents a small disc but will gradually brighten over the next few months. Jupiter is in Libra and will be low in the south at around 7.30am.

“Saturn rises in the south-east around one and a half hours before the sun towards the end of January. The moon is full on the 2nd, at last quarter on the 8th, new on the 17th, at first quarter on the 24th and again full on January 31.”