By james art 
Must-see astronomical events of 2025: eclipses, supermoons and more
2025 will be a fascinating year for astronomy and space exploration enthusiasts, with several must-see events on the calendar.
Undoubtedly – News
Everyone is talking about it on social media. The Great Planetary Alignment comes on January 25th, when all the planets will be aligned and visible in the night sky. Breathtaking and magical, and possibly the contender for something.
Also? It’s not true. But in January the sky will be pretty cool anyway.
Is the planetary alignment happening on January 25th?
No more than usual.
The planets in our solar system orbit the sun in more or less the same flat plane as Earth, according to Earthsky.org, called the Ecliptic. The celestial bodies near us, the Sun and the Moon and the planets, seem to drift across the sky every day and night from east to west in the same imaginary song.
From the earth’s surface the planets always Appear somewhere along these lines, the same that the Sun and Moon follow, if not a ruler.
But there will be a lot of them this month.
Sky full of planets in January
In January 2025 six planets will be visible in the night sky, four of them with the naked eye. Not in what we think of as a straight line; Two of them will be on one side of the sky and the rest will be on the opposite side.
During the first few hours after dark throughout the month, you’ll be able to see Venus and Saturn in the southwest, Jupiter High and Mars in the east, according to NASA. If you have a telescope and an app to help you find them, you can also see Uranus and Neptune.
Nothing special happens on January 25th. But Mars, which is on the opposite side of the Earth from the Sun this month (called “opposition”), will be the biggest and brightest, and on Monday, January 13, the Moon will appear to pass in front of it.
Meanwhile, Venus and Saturn will get closer during January’s so-called “Conjunction,” and on the nights of Jan. 17 and 18, they’ll appear within a few finger widths of each other, according to NASA. They would still be hundreds of millions of miles away, of course, but they would seem very close.
How to see the planetary “alignment” in January
The Old Farmer’s Almanac suggests checking out the cosmic display on January 16 like this.
- Start at 6:30pm and look west to see super-bright Venus twinkling across the sky. You can’t miss it.
- A little to the left will be something brighter than the stars, but much smaller than Venus. This is Saturn. You’ll have an hour or two to see them before they drop below the horizon.
- Face east. The brightest light will be Jupiter, quite high in the sky. The lowest light in the east will be Mars, which will have an orange hue.
“If it is cloudy, everything in the east will look the same for many evenings,” said the old farmer’s almanac, although by the 20th Venus and Saturn will have moved away from each other.