The Night Sky This Month

Northern HemisphereThe Night SkyNorthern HemisphereIan Morison tells us what we can see in the northern hemisphere's night sky during January 2019.Note the Total Eclipse of the Moon on the morning of January 21stThe PlanetsJupiter.Jupiter starts the month rising around 5 a.m., and brightens from magnitude -1.9 to -1.9 as the month progresses whilst its angular size increases slightly from 31.8 to 33.6 arc seconds. The highlights show how it combines with Venus to give us some wonderful views in the East before dawn. Saturn.Saturn passes behind the Sun on the 2nd of January so will not be visible in the pre-dawn eastern sky until around the third week of the month shining with a magnitude of +0.6. With a disk of ~15 arc seconds across and with rings spanning over twice this, it will rise one and a half hours before the Sun by month's end.Mercury.Mercury might just be glimpsed in the first few days of the month very low in the southeast just before sunrise shining at magnitude -0.4. Binoculars could well