Caoimhín's Content

Today, we are going to be taking a look at the night sky for January, concentrating on the constellations. However, there are also a couple of things I want to say about my YouTube channel and how I will be posting videos going forward this year.

If you are a regular viewer of my YouTube channel, you may have noticed that I haven’t put up a video in Irish in a while, in a couple of months. Even if you are primarily a reader of this website, you may have noticed. I was putting up Irish language videos, and you can still find all of the Irish language videos that I have posted on my YouTube channel or on this website if you go back through the older posts. Unfortunately, every time that I posted a video in Irish it caused my YouTube metrics to go down. In order to continue growing the YouTube channel, I won’t be able to post Irish language videos. Luckily, I now have a third YouTube channel, Caoimhín’s Content as Gaeilge and on that YouTube channel I will be posting Irish language astronomy videos roughly once a month. I will continue to post twice a week going forward, but on occasion the second video that I post to YouTube may be on my third channel, Caoimhín’s Content as Gaeilge instead of this channel, Caoimhín’s Content. You won’t be losing out on any content, especially if you are primarily a reader. However, if you did watch the Irish language videos, or if you would just like to support me in all of my endeavors, then you can head over to Caoimhín’s Content as Gaeilge, and I will be linking all of those videos to an article here.

You may also be wondering, if that’s my third YouTube channel, then what’s my second YouTube channel? Caoimhín’s Other Content, on which I only have one video posted. You can find the article connected to that video on this website as well, from sometime last year. Caoimhín’s Other Content currently deals with language creation or conlanging, but I will be dealing with world building, speculative evolution/speculative lifeforms and other things on that channel in the near future. For this website, if you enjoy reading about astronomy, then nothing’s really going to change. I will keep posting articles here on this website connected to all and any of my videos on any channel.

With that out of the way, we’re going to take a look at the early nighttime sky in January and we’re going to concentrate on the constellations. There are plenty of constellations that we can see here, but at sunset, especially viewing them from the city, there are many that we can’t actually see. There are several constellations whose stars aren’t actually visible to us. For example Delphinus, you may see one little star, but it’s not quite enough to work out the whole shape of the constellation. For the constellation Equuleus just next to it, you also can’t really see any stars, not from our perspective here in the city. The light pollution of the city is interfering with our viewing of some constellations, but nonetheless, even the middle of January, just after sunset, at about 6:30, we have a sky full of stars and full of constellations.

I mentioned in a couple of previous videos that there is a group of stars kind of stretching across the sky. From high in the south we have Andromeda, with the square of Pegasus just a little over to the southwest and then a little over to the southeast we have the fin shape of Perseus. The stars of those constellations are visible even in a light polluted city, so those constellations aren’t too hard to pick out, and they’re some particularly famous names. Pegasus, Perseus and Andromeda are famous characters in Greek mythology, even if their constellations are a little less famous than the zodiacal constellations. Things like Gemini over in the east with Jupiter, Taurus, Aries, Pisces, and Aquarius over in the west, these are all above the horizon as the Sun is going down. Cancer of course, low to the east, is barely visible at all. We never really get to see Cancer, even in the countryside it’s a tough constellation to spot. These zodiacal constellations are some of the most famous along with Orion just down to the southeast. Some of the other zodiacal constellations are invisible in the city, but we can see two of the stars for Aries. If we take a look up towards the south, just under Andromeda, we can see those two stars next to each other just a little east of due south. Those are the two brighter stars in the constellation Aries the Ram. Pisces stretches across a big chunk of the sky, but they’re very faint stars, very difficult to see. Luckily, we can see Saturn, pretty much leaving Pisces towards its western edge. It’s going to be out of Pisces in the near future as Saturn continues its own slow journey around the Sun, taking almost 30 years to get around the Sun once.

We’ve got a very clear view of some bright constellations down in the south, and turning back around to the north we have the same constellations that we usually see. In the west, almost northwest, have our summer triangle going down, of course we’re just past midwinter, we’re definitely not in summer anymore. We have the Plough nice and low pointing up to the north star and then Cassiopeia through on the other side. However there are regions of the northern sky, quite big regions, that look pretty empty if you are looking at them from the city. Bringing up our constellations, some of the constellations, like Camelopardalis, are pretty tough to see, not many of the stars in that constellation are visible, just east of Cassiopeia. The same with the Lynx just east of the Plough, also very difficult to see any of the stars in that constellation. With Draco to the west we can see a couple of stars, there are definitely a couple of stars visible, but that constellation takes up a huge area of the sky where it’s mainly faint stars that we’re not seeing.

Heading out to the countryside will let us see a lot more if we get rid of the light pollution entirely, then the sky will be swarmed with stars. We’re not going to get rid of it entirely, we’re just going to go to a Bortle class 2 instead of a Bortle class 1, and already the sky is full of stars. We’re already seeing much more here in terms of the constellations. Aries is a lot more visible, we’re even, just about, able to make out the V shape of Pisces. Of course, a V shape in the sky might not immediately make you think of a fish, or pair of fish in this case, but if you imagine that it’s two fish with their tails tied together, then you might get a better idea.

Orion, of course, is nice and obvious, as is Taurus, or at least parts of Taurus are. Aldebaran is very clear, the Pleiades are very clear, but the horns of Taurus stretch all the way up to Auriga. Taurus is quite a big constellation, even though the horns of Taurus are maybe less famous, and the hooves of Taurus below Aldebaran as well. We associate Taurus a lot with the Pleiades and the Hyades, but it is a bigger constellation that does stretch out on either side. Coming back to Delphinus and Equuleus, Equuleus is the Little Horse, but it is shown as just the head of a horse, but the ways that these constellations have been drawn has changed over time as well. A couple of stars are visible in a dark sky for Equuleus, as is the diamond shape of Delphinus.

Turning back around to the north, we do have a lot more visible in the sky. We can see a lot more of the stairs next to the Plough, the rest of Ursa Major. Coming up above the North Star, we can see a lot more of the stars in Camelopardalis. I always think of this as a Camel-Leopard, so “Camelopardis” (sic), but it’s Camelopardalis, that extra little bit which I always tend forget. Lower down, Lynx is Lynx, which is nice and easy to remember, but still a tricky constellation to spot in the sky. Even in a dark sky, this is still a pretty sparse region of space where we’re not seeing a lot of bright stars. The shape of Draco, however, is a lot more obvious with its arced stars here. So again, I’ll bring up the image and we can see that kind of curved shape for the body of Draco and then these stars here for the head.

Although these constellations, the fainter ones, the smaller ones, can be pretty tricky to spot, the major ones, the big ones, the famous ones, are in fantastic positions at this time of year. Orion and Gemini over towards the east-southeast are going to be with us for pretty much the entire night. Of course with Jupiter coming up to opposition on the 10th, if Jupiter is with us all night long, then it means the region of the sky it is in is going to be with us all night long, crossing from the east over to the west. This means we have loads of time to look for the those constellations in the sky. Constellations like Pegasus with the square and coming over to Perseus through Andromeda should be a reasonably easy naked-eye challenge. Just below Andromeda and above Aries there is a little triangle as well, Triangulum.

They’re all going to be nice and easy to see as the Sun goes down, and importantly, still easy to see even if you are in a city like Cork. If you are in a slightly brighter city, it might be tougher. Cork City is close to Bortle Class 5, but Bortle Class 8 is what’s considered a city sky, and it makes a pretty big difference. We’ve still got Saturn, we’ve still got Jupiter, we’ve still got Pollux and Castor in Gemini and we’ve still got Capella here in Auriga. On the other hand, we’re missing other parts of the pentagon of Auriga, the shapes of Perseus, Cassiopeia and Pegasus are practically invisible under this level of light pollution. You might just barely catch a little bit of the bottom of Auriga. Between Capella Aldebaran is a star forming the bottom of Auriga and the top of Taurus. Aldebaran is visible, even though we’re missing the rest of the Hyades and all of the Pleiades. They are all still there, it is just that little bit harder to catch. I hope that you get a chance to see some of the constellations under at least reasonably good conditions. Even conditions like those in a smaller city like Cork, if you are living in a bigger city that can be quite a big improvement.

I hope that you continue to enjoy this website over the coming year, hopefully it will continue to grow. If you’re interested in my video content, you can check out Caoimhín’s Content as Gaeilge as well as Caoimhín’s Other Content on YouTube, all the videos of which will be linked to articles here. I do also have an Instagram account, also under Caoimhín’s Content. Yet again, I hope that you enjoyed this piece and hopefully I’ll see you back here next time.