This is Ephemeris for Wednesday, January 28th. Today the Sun will be up for 9 hours and 39 minutes, setting at 5:45, and it will rise tomorrow at 8:05. The Moon, 3 days past first quarter, will set at 5:43 tomorrow morning.
Let’s take our weekly look at the whereabouts of the naked-eye planets. Saturn is the brightest star-like object in the southwestern sky as soon as it gets dark. In a telescope Saturn sports a very thin ring, 2 degrees from being edge on and is slowly opening. Jupiter is the brilliant star-like object in the eastern sky, to the right of Pollux in the pair Castor and Pollux, the bright stars of Gemini. It is still moving slowly to the west, and will, until it stops and reverses its track on March 10th. Jupiter’s 4 brightest moons can be seen even in binoculars, if held steadily enough. They shift position night to night. At 8 PM tonight, all four Galilean moons can be seen, though two may too close to the planet to be picked out in binoculars.
The astronomical event times given in this blog are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan (Lat 44.7° N, Long 85.7° W; EST, UT – 5 hours) unless stated otherwise. Times will be different for other locations.
Addendum
Saturn appears lonely in the west- southwestern sky at 8 PM. Created using Stellarium.
Jupiter as it appears tonight, January 28, 2026, in its orientation at 9:00 PM, moving against the stars of Gemini. Also shown is its track from last July to next July, and the retrograde loop that is currently making, slowly moving to the West which you will do for the next 41 days until it stops in March. Then it will resume its eastward motion. Created using Stellarium, Libreoffice Draw and GIMP.
The Moon three days past first quarter, as seen this evening, January 28, 2026. A view visible in small telescopes showing an image with and without selected features labeled. Created using Stellarium, LibreOffice Draw, and GIMP.
Telescopic Saturn, and Jupiter (north up) as they would be seen in a small telescope with the same magnification at 8 PM tonight, January 28, 2026. Saturn will be 16.4″ in diameter, but its rings, being nearly edge on, may show up brighter than seen here, and extend to 38.2″. They are tilted 2.0° from being edge on. Jupiter will be 45.9″ in diameter. Io will begin transiting the planet at 8:35 PM EDT (1:35 UT on the 29th). Its shadow will begin crossing the planet at 9:02 PM EDT (2:02 UT). The transit will end at 10:51 PM EDT (3:51 UT), with the shadow leaving the planet at 11:19 PM EDT (4:19 UT). The (”) symbol means seconds of arc, or 1/3600th of a degree. Created using Cartes du Ciel (Sky Charts), LibreOffice Draw and GIMP.
The naked-eye planets and the Moon at sunset and sunrise on a single night, starting with sunset on the right on January 28th, 2026. The night ends on the left with sunrise on the 29th. 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 28th and 29th, 2026. Some of the columns are self-explanatory, others are 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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