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Western Slope Skies - Astronomy Highlights for 2025

The Sun’s at the peak of its11-year activity cycle. Recently, there’ve been many sunspots, extreme solar flares, and coronal mass ejections of charged particles. This activity’s been triggering auroras, also called northern lights, airglow, and Stable Aurora Red Arcs (SARs). Many of us have seen these amazing displays from the Western Slope, and we may see more in 2025.

Venus is a beacon in the southwestern and western evening sky from January through early March. Our brilliant “Sister Planet” then passes near the Sun in our sky on March 22 and becomes striking in the pre-dawn by mid-April. Reddish Mars is bright all night long during January, rising in the east northeast around sunset and setting in the west northwest around sunrise. The Red Planet is nearest Earth on January 12 and opposite the Sun in our sky on January 16. Between 6:55 and 7:53 PM MST on January 13, the full Moon will occult (or move in front of) Mars, an event that we can see with binoculars or telescopes.

Let’s hope for clear skies on the night of March 13-14, because we will be treated to a total lunar eclipse. The eclipse is total from 12:26 AM to 1:31 AM MDT, when the entire Moon will be immersed in Earth’s umbral shadow. The Moon will glow with a delicate and beautiful reddish tint. This is sunlight that is reddened passing through Earth’s atmosphere and then refracted into Earth’s shadow.

On the morning of August 12 at about 5 AM MDT, gaze into the eastern sky and you will see Venus and Jupiter, the two brightest planets, only 1 degree apart – that’s less than two apparent Moon diameters! This will be an amazing spectacle! In 2025, several meteor showers will peak under dark skies, including the Lyrid Shower in April, the Orionids in October, and the Leonids in November. The Geminids, the strongest and most reliable of the annual meteor showers, will reach maximum on the night of December 13-14.

In space science, we can look forward to more breakthroughs from the James Webb Space Telescope. And up to 7 robotic probes may land on the Moon. The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument on a telescope in Arizona may help us better understand gravity and the mysterious phenomenon of dark energy.

There will be many special astronomy events in 2025. But each month, do take advantage of our Western Slope’s dark skies, by viewing planetary groupings, the striking stars of winter, the galaxies of spring, the summer Milky Way, and the constellations and star clusters of autumn. Music written and produced by Kenny Mihelich (ma-HELL-itch). Western Slope Skies is produced by the Black Canyon Astronomical Society and KVNF Community Radio. This feature was written and voiced by Art Trevena.