Caoimhín's Content

Today we are going to be taking a look at New Year’s Eve! New Year’s Eve, of course, is famous for being a night where people stay up until midnight ringing in the New Year, so of course it’s a great night for impromptu astronomy.

Many people are going to be up until at least midnight, however some people wake up with the sunrise on New Year’s Day to see the first sunrise of the new year. You don’t need to pick which tradition you’d prefer, I’ll discuss the view ar both times. Furthermore, if you’re staying up until midnight anyway, it will only be six or seven hours until the Sun rises, so you can always push straight through and get to do both celebrations, ringing in midnight and welcoming the rising Sun.

I had intended to say a little about early January as well, as there are some interesting things coming up, but it seems they will need to wait till next time.

We will begin as the Sun sets. Just like on Christmas Eve, on New Year’s Eve we will continue to have Venus as our evening star. Venus isn’t at its absolute greatest eastern elongation yet, that will come a little bit later in January, but even by Christmas Eve, Venus was pretty far across the sky, practically in the south-southwest, rather than the southwest. As such, it will be in the sky for quite a while, and as the brightest object, is clearly visible as soon as the sky starts to darken. Jupiter is a little bit fainter, but it should become visible coming up to 5 o’clock.

I generally deal with viewing conditions either from the city or the darkest parts of the countryside. I often mention that the level of light pollution is comparable to Cork City, which is far from the largest city in the world, the light pollution could be much worse. However, there are various levels of light pollution, the level of a town or a village, that are better than Cork but not perfectly dark. Even small differences in light pollution can change when things are visible by a few minutes at least.

Importantly, Stellarium shows no weather, so of course it would be the rare condition of Cork City without any clouds. Even without clouds, many locations often have high humidity. A little bit of humidity in the atmosphere can make things a little bit fainter as well, even if there’s no obvious clouds. Some of the fainter stars, that are visible in the simulated Stellarium sky, they would be very difficult for me to see from Cork, even on a technically clear night, due to water droplets in thw upper atmosphere.

Once the sky finally gets dark, and we’re still not even at 6 o’clock, we’ve got Venus, Saturn and Jupiter all visible in the sky. The Square of Pegasus is directly above south coming up to 5:45, nice and easy to see. If you keep craning your head back, you will come up to the W of Cassiopeia and of course the Andromeda Galaxy is up there, but it’s going to be pretty difficult to see from the city.

We’re going to keep pushing ahead and of course we have to push ahead quite a lot to get from sunset to midnight on New Year’s Eve. Just coming up to 7:15 and we’ve got Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Venus and of course Uranus and Neptune, all together in the sky. All we’re missing is Mercury coming around to the evening sky, and of course with Venus just reaching its greatest elongation, we’ve got the time to get that last extra planet into the sky. We may get to see them all at the same time by February, but that is generally more difficult to achieve from here in Ireland than it is from locations closer to the equator, due to how low in the sky Mercury is visible.

Continuing to push later, Saturn and Venus will be gone before we come to midnight. By just a little after 10 o’clock, there’s only two planets left in the sky. Even though ringing in the New Year means staying up until midnight, with midnight as sort of the goal time for New Year’s celebrations, other times do show more, astronomically speaking. Taking a look at the sun as it goes down and a little bit later, close to 7:15, that’s when you’re going to get the most planets in sky. Even if Venus was at its greatest elongation, seeing Venus and Mars in the sky at the same time can be a little bit tricky, though it will get easier as Mars continues to rise earlier and earlier.

Finally we are pretty much at midnight, and I’m sure people would already be gathering a little before, certainly with just about 30 seconds to go until the stroke of midnight. Looking at this sky, we’ve got Mars, we’ve got Jupiter, we’ve got Orion, we’ve got the brightest star, Sirius, and much more besides. This is the kind of sky you will get to see if you are in the city, of course, if you’re in the countryside you’ll get to see even more.

I do want to mention fireworks. Fireworks do cause a little bit of light pollution, but they do only cause a flash of light pollution. Even though that bright flash doesn’t stick around too long in the sky, the bright initial ignition of the firework will ruin your night vision. If you are watching a fireworks display, you will have to leave your eyes readapt to the darkness to really get a good view of the sky. Now, of course, in the city, a lot of the fainter stars will be blocked out anyway, but the extra light of fireworks will make even middling stars difficult to observe if there is a fireworks display going on. Fireworks displays can go on for a while, but generally they’re pretty quick. Unless you’re at a major organized fireworks display, usually, you’ll get a handful of fireworks going up in the sky, they’ll pop, they’ll fade away, and that will be it, the light won’t persist for too long.

A drone show could be a different story, if there is a bunch of bright electric lights standing in the sky, staying there for quite a while, not only is that going to ruin your night vision, but that can generate a much more serious light pollution problem. Often, as soon as a firework fades away and you leave your eyes adapt, stars are going to be visible. Even if you are in a dark sky, if you’re far enough away from the fireworks, fireworks going off even reasonably nearby isn’t going to raise the level of light pollution that much, whereas the electric lights of a drone show can. They can make things much more difficult to observe and they can obscure an even larger part of the sky than most fireworks shows.

However, light pollution on one night of the year isn’t too bad. The ongoing light pollution that we have all of the time is a much more serious problem.

If you go out on New Year’s Eve and you don’t get to see the stars because there are too many celebrations going on, that’s not as bad as going out on a normal night and not being able to see the stars because people are trying to advertise their building in the middle of the night. Or, even worse, because somebody designed the street lights to point up into the sky instead of on the ground where people need to see where they’re going. These year long issues are a little bit more pervasive. Then again, I personally would be annoyed if I went out on New Year’s Eve to look for Mars and Jupiter, or to look for Orion’s sword and it was obscured because of fireworks or a drone show. I would be bothered, but it bothers me a lot more not being able to see the Milky Way any night of the year, just because of where I live. Other people may have a different opinion.

Continuing to the end of the night, if you’re watching sunrise in the morning, it will be at about 7:45, sunrise is quite late. We’re past the winter solstice, the sunrise will start getting earlier and earlier, but by New Year’s morning it won’t have changed too much. As late as almost 8 o’clock, Mercury will be visible, as will Mars. If you are going to be welcoming the rising sun on New Year’s morning, rather than observing midnight, there will still be interesting things to see. Along with Mercury we’ve got the constellation of Scorpius, we’ve got Leo and Virgo with the star Spica in the middle. Above Spica is Arcturus in Boötes, and craning back past the zenith is Plough. There are plenty of nice constellations visible in the morning, particularly some very famous ones.

Speaking of constellations, coming back to midnight, Mars is in Gemini with Jupiter in Taurus. The brightest star and the second brightest planet, Sirius and Jupiter are in the sky together, which is always nice to see, you get to make a visual comparison between a bright planet and the brightest star. Jupiter may be fainter than Venus, but it is still brighter than the brightest star. Venus, of course, is there at sunset with Jupiter, so you can compare the brightest planet to the second brightest planet as well.

I hope some of you are out in the countryside for New Year’s, particularly if you normally live in a city but visit relatives in the countryside for Christmas, it may be worth sticking around until New Year’s as well, just because the sky will look quite nice. Even as early as 4:30, the skat can be better. Light pollution is there as soon as the lights turn on. Thankfully, in a lot of locations, street lights don’t turn on until it is sufficiently dark, there is often a light detector with streetlights that allows them to automatically tell when it’s dark enough to turn on. However, some street lights are just on timers, they come on automatically and they can sometimes come on too early. Generally speaking, if you’re in an area with less light pollution, there’s going to be less light pollution the entire time. We don’t notice it during the day and hopefully more lights are turned off during the day, but as soon as nighttime begins, things will appear that little bit earlier as well,

In a dark sky just a tiny bit past 5 o’clock, and not only do we have Saturn, Venus and Jupiter, but we’re already starting to see some of the Seven Sisters. Without the sky even fully dark, we can see almost as many of the Pleiades as we would see from here in the city in the middle of the night. We’ll keep pushing later, and even with a little bit of glow in the sky, Altair is still above the horizon, but it won’t be there for long. Mars hasn’t quite risen yet, so we’ll push a little bit further ahead till we can see the glow of the Milky Way. You can catch some of the brighter regions of our galaxy that brief moment just after the Sun goes down, before the coreward portion of the Milky Way sets with it. Unfortunately, that’s as close to the core as you’ll get to see this close to midwinter here in Ireland. The Andromeda Galaxy is almost due south at 6:15, so a nice and early time to catch the Andromeda Galaxy. A little later, Mars just after rising. Of course, to be practical, Mars probably won’t be visible when it’s that close to the horizon, but it still shares the sky with Venus as it gets higher. There is a moment when Mars and Venus are roughly equidistant from their respective rising and setting points. Mars and Venus will be both roughly the same height away from the horizon on opposite sides of the sky, coming up to 7 o’clock.

As we push past 7 o’clock, we do have a bit of that Milky Way visible, though the outer limb is a fainter than the center. The Seven Sisters are very clear this early, with all 7 clearly visible from a dark enough sky. Uranus is up near them despite being very hard to spot, with Neptune technically above the horizon as well. Neptune will be on the ecliptic, on the arc in between Jupiter and Saturn, closer to Saturn than Jupiter. In the same way Uranus is closer to Jupiter on that line.

Pulling up top midnight in the countryside, midnight here in Ireland at least. We’re going off the same time zone as Greenwich Mean Time, midnight may be slightly different for you. Not that midnight itself will be slightly different for you, but what the sky looks like at exactly midnight may be slightly different for you, if you’re in a different location relative to the center of your time zone. The time zones themselves will ensure that we all see similar stars when our local clock says midnight, but depending on where you are within your time zone, things way be in very slightly different positions. If you are just at the eastern edge of your time zone, when the clock says midnight you’ll see Orion potentially a little east of south, if not due south. If you’re in the very middle of your time zone, then you should see Orion pretty much due south at exactly midnight. If you are like us here in Ireland, a little bit to the western edge of your time zone, then you’ll see Orion slightly to the west. There is some slight variation depending on where you are within your time zone and of course how your time zone works. Sometime zones are a lot larger than the sort of standard amount, and sometimes time zones get a little bit wiggly for the purposes of national boundaries and things like that.

Finally at midnight, ringing in the New Year in the countryside, there’s definitely some Milky Way visible, and thankfully no Moon at all. The Moon is practically new on New Year’s so we don’t have to worry about it, we’re getting as dark a sky as we could possibly hope for. Orion is in a lovely position for its sword to be observed, and of course, because we’re seeing these so close to midwinter, Mars and Jupiter are going to be significantly higher in the sky at midnight than they would be if you were doing this during midsummer. We’ve also got Leo down towards the east, nice and clear with those planets in the middle of the sky. I always have a tough time recognizing some of the smaller constellations at first glance. Aries in particular is just a couple of stars, but it is right next to Taurus. Even some of these very famous zodiacal constellations, they look so odd sometimes they can be a little bit difficult to recognize.

To finish up, we’ll head out to morning time, to see how long we get to see Mercury. The summer triangle will be coming back around, at least Vega and Deneb, presumably Altair will just be under the horizon. For almost the entire night the summer triangle was missing because we are in the opposite of summer. We have Mercury and Mars well into 8 o’clock, even 8:10, Mercury is there, nice and clear and visible, with Mars, if you’re up to watch the sunrise on New Year’s morning. You would need a very clear horizon if you want to catch Mercury as early as, you know, let’s say 7:30, when it first rises. It is still just about visible, and much higher, by 7:50 if you’re in the countryside. You will have a smaller observation window if you’re trying to do this in the city,.

I will unfortunately have to leave all of the interesting things that are happening in January itself for next time. I do hope that you enjoyed this piece taking a look at, particularly midnight on New Year’s, but of course sunset, just after sunset, just about 7:00 when Mars and Venus are in the sky together. It’s not just midnight, but the other times of New Year’s are going to look pretty good as well. If you did enjoy this piece then please do like it and you can subscribe to this website and my YouTube channel if you’d like to see more content from me in the future. Hopefully I’ll see you back here next time.