This is Bob Moler with Ephemeris for Wednesday, January 29th. Today the Sun will be up for 9 hours and 42 minutes, setting at 5:47, and it will rise tomorrow at 8:03. The Moon is new today, and won’t be visible.
Let’s take our weekly look at the whereabouts of the naked-eye planets. At 8 PM this evening four of the five naked eye planets will be out. Starting from the West we have Venus the brightest of all low in the west southwest. Almost directly below it will be the much dimmer Saturn. Jupiter, the second-brightest planet will be high in the south-southeast. Below it is the letter V shape of stars that is the head of Taurus the bull. Farther below is the spectacular constellation of Orion the hunter. The 4th planet out is Mars, the third-brightest planet now, with its distinctive reddish hue, near the star Pollux in Gemini, and just about due east. The fifth naked eye planet, Mercury, is too close to the Sun in the morning to be visible.
The astronomical event times given are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan (EST, UT – 5 hours). Times will be different for other locations.
Addendum
An 8 PM January 29, 2025 planet panorama. Venus and Saturn are in the west-southwest, and Jupiter is in the south-southeast. Mars is in the east. Click or tap on the image to enlarge it. Created using Stellarium.
Telescopic Saturn, Venus, Jupiter and Mars (north up) as they would be seen in a small telescope with the same magnification. All the planets are shown for tonight, 8 PM, January 29, 2025. Apparent diameters: Saturn 16.0″, its rings 37.3″, 3.0 degrees from edge on andclosing; Venus 30.7″, 40.0% illuminated; Jupiter 43.8″; Mars, 13.9″. Planetary surface detail is more subtle than shown here. Europa will disappear behind Jupiter at 9:44 PM EST (UT-5), and reappear from the planet’s shadow at 2:39 AM. The ” means seconds of arc, or 1/3600th of a degree. Click or tap on the image to enlarge it. Created using Cartes du Ciel (Sky Charts).
The naked-eye planets and the Moon at sunset and sunrise on a single night, starting with sunset on the right on January 29, 2025. The night ends on the left with sunrise on the 30th. Click or tap on the image to enlarge it. Created using my LookingUp app and GIMP.
This is a low precision ephemeris of the Sun Moon and naked eye planet positions for today and tomorrow, January 29 and 30, 2025. Some of the columns are self-explanatory, others not. The transit column is the time that the body crosses the meridian and is due south. Elong, for elongation, is the angle between the Sun and that body. RA is right ascension, which is the object’s east-west position on the celestial sphere in hours and minutes. Dec is declination which is the north-south position of the object on the celestial sphere in degrees and minutes. R is the distance of that object from the Sun in astronomical units. An astronomical unit is about 93 million miles or 150 million kilometers. And Delta is the distance of that object from the Earth, also in astronomical units. I omit the ‘m’ in am and pm for compactness. The data was generated using my LookingUp for DOS app and displayed as a table by my Ephemeris Helper app.
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