~ St. Maarten’s Backyard Astronomy for January 5 & 6 ~
Sun rises at 6:44am
Sun sets at 5:49pm
Lunar phase: New Moon, virtually absent
Happy New Year from the Night Sky SXM Team! The coming year will be a great one from a stargazer’s point of view, with a plethora of eclipses on the calendar starting this weekend. This year, the earth will have three solar eclipses (one total and annular, visible from South America on July 2). We also have two lunar eclipses, one of which is in two weeks.
Specifically on Sunday, January 6, at 1:28 UTC (aka Greenwich Mean Time) which translates to 9:28pm here on St. Maarten, the moon will pass between the Earth and Sun, to stage a partial eclipse of the sun. But don’t get too excited, it will only be visible from Asia, and just a little bit of Alaska. This will be the first of three solar eclipses in 2019, but unfortunately our location isn’t privy to any of those big solar eclipse shows.
We will, however, have a total lunar eclipse visible from St Maarten later this month which you may have seen a few memes about; it’s hard to miss if you’re on the internet lately, it’s being billed as a super moon wolf’s blood solar eclipse. A super moon is just a little closer to earth than normal, which makes the moon appear just a little bit bigger than usual. The full moon of January is always given the name Wolf Moon, and the blood red coloration will be due to the shadow on the earth falling on the moon, casting a reddish hue across the lunar face. Look for this awe-inspiring event on January 20-21. It will be the last total lunar eclipse to grace Earth’s sky until May 26, 2021.
This total eclipse of the moon will last for somewhat more than one hour, and is preceded and followed by a partial umbral eclipse, each time persisting for over an hour. The whole umbral eclipse from start to finish has a duration of a little more than three hours and a third, and can be viewed from our lovely island from 10:40pm January 20 (Sunday night) until about 1:15am on January 21 (Monday). The peak of the wolf blood super moon eclipse will be just after midnight. But that is in two weeks.
This weekend is ideal for searching for the night sky’s brightest star, Sirius, and if you have good binoculars or a telescope, you can find the faint star cluster near it. Sirius is easy to see because it’s so bright and because the three prominent Belt stars in the constellation Orion – three stars in a short, straight row – always point to it.
That fuzzy spot near Sirius is a lovely star cluster called M-41. This cluster lies about four degrees almost exactly south of Sirius. M-41 is sometimes also called the Little Beehive cluster.
Early risers are rewarded these days with eastern skies alight with planets! Venus, the morning star, and Jupiter, are currently predawn delights, along with the bright star Arcturus.
Thank you for keeping up with the Night Sky articles. If you are out later on in the week, each star rises about four minutes earlier each day than written here, and the moon rises 50 minutes later. Night Sky is researched and compiled by Lisa Davis-Burnett. Earthsky.org is a key resource for information and images. Questions or comments? Email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
