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Stargazing News - January 4th, 2025

From CJ@21:2/156 to All on Friday, January 03, 2025 08:27:32

Saturday, January 4, 2025

Waxing Moon joins Saturn (evening)

In the southwestern sky after sunset on Saturday, January 4, the yellowish dot of Saturn will appear several degrees to the WSW of the waxing crescent moon - close enough to share the view in binoculars. Venus will gleam to their lower right. The moon and Saturn will be visible from dusk until they set at about
10 p.m. local time. Hours earlier, skywatchers located in a zone extending across northwestern Africa, most of Europe, Iceland, and northeastern
Greenland can safely watch the moon occult Saturn with unaided eyes, binoculars, and backyard telescopes. Use an app like Starry Night or Sky
Safari to look up the event's start and end times where you live. Earth at Perihelion

The Earth will reach perihelion, its minimum distance from the sun for the year, on Saturday, January 4 at 8 a.m. EST, or 5 a.m. PST, or 13:00 UT. At perihelion Earth will be 91.404 million miles (or 147.101 million km) from our star, about 1.67% closer than our mean distance of 1.0 Astronomical Unit. As winter-chilled Northern Hemisphere dwellers will attest, daily temperatures on Earth are not controlled by our proximity to the sun, but by the number of hours of daylight we experience.

(Data courtesy of Starry Night)
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