Look to the southern sky at dusk on 12 January to see the 6-day-old waxing crescent Moon just 6½ degrees below magnitude +0.6 Mars in the constellation of Pisces. If you own wide-angle 7× or 8× binoculars, you can see the pair in the same field of view. Note that the Moon’s apparent size has been enlarged for clarity in this illustration. AN graphic by Ade Ashford.Observers in the British Isles and Western Europe looking up at the waxing lunar crescent around nautical dusk (some 1½ hours after sunset in the UK) on Saturday, 12 January will notice that the Moon is not alone – an orange-coloured magnitude +0.6 ‘star’ lies less than a span of a fist at arm’s length above it. This bright interloper in the otherwise modest stars of the constellation of Pisces is none other than Mars.
Some 24 weeks after its close opposition of 2018, the Red Planet presently lies almost 204 million kilometres from Earth, hence its tiny gibbous disc spans just 6.9 arcseconds. Not surprisingly, little in the way of martian surface detail will be evident except in large backyard instruments.
Our Moon has half the physical diameter of Mars, but the Red Planet appears so much smaller since it lies more than 500 times farther away this night. In fact, you need a telescope magnifying in excess of 260× to enlarge Mars to the same apparent size as the adjacent Moon appears to the unaided eye on 12 January.
Science teams from across the United States have submitted 28 proposals for missions to explore the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, touch the asteroid-like satellites orbiting Mars, visit unseen worlds and hunt for objects that could strike Earth one day.
Researchers have found remnants of ancient ice sheets buried up to a mile below Mars’ northern polar cap, a record of seasonal climate change on the red planet.
Before sunrise on Thursday 19 January, observers in Western Europe can see an interesting celestial conjunction in the southern sky. At about 6am local time, the waning gibbous Moon, largest planet Jupiter and Spica — the brightest star in the constellation of Virgo — all lie in a line encompassed by the field of view of a typical 7x or 8x binocular.
