Howdy Star Gazers and welcome to the first Star
Trails episode of 2026. If you're new here, my
name is Drew, and I'll be your guide to the night
sky, a place you can return to again and again,
all year long. And if you've been listening for
a while, welcome back. This episode is for you
too. Every January, I like to do something a
little different. Instead of jumping straight
into a checklist of objects and events, we slow
things down, we zoom out, we reset. Maybe you
received a telescope for Christmas. Or maybe
you happened to look up one evening and wonder,
what is that thing? Either way, the beginning
of the year is when a lot of people first feel
the pull to look up. And it's also when a lot
of people quietly convince themselves they don't
know enough to do that properly. Tonight is about
undoing that idea. Astronomy can sometimes have
a reputation problem. Somewhere along the way,
it became associated with expensive gear, intimidating
knowledge, and the sense that everyone else already
knows what they're doing. But at its core, astronomy
is much simpler than that. Astronomy is standing
still for a moment and noticing that something
vast is happening above you, whether or not you
understand all of it yet. You don't need permission
to look at the sky, you don't need credentials,
and you don't even need a telescope, you just
need attention. The sky has been here for your
entire life It will be here for the rest of it
and it doesn't care if you miss a night or a
month or even a year This show exists because
astronomy isn't a race. It's a relationship and
January is a very good time to begin one To start
let's take a look at one of the most useful ideas
in astronomy which happens to also be one of
the simplest. The sky is a clock, a slow, reliable
one that tells time in hours, seasons, and years.
If you step outside on a clear January evening,
the sky isn't random, it's organized. Keep this
basic idea in mind. Stars rise in the east, they
drift across the sky, and they set in the west.
just like the moon and the sun. That motion isn't
the stars moving around us, it's the earth turning
beneath them. Over the course of a single night,
the sky marks the passage of hours. Over the
course of months, it marks the passage of seasons.
That's why winter skies look so different from
summer skies. Familiar constellations vanish,
and new ones take their place. Also, January
is a great time to learn about astronomy because
the sky gets dark early, stays dark longer, and
it doesn't rush you. You don't have to stay up
late to learn it. It's kind of like the universe
meets you halfway. Let's talk about naked eye
astronomy, not as a beginner phase, not as something
you graduate from, but as the foundation of everything
else. Your eyes are extraordinary instruments
once you give them time. When you step outside,
your eyes need about 20 minutes to fully adapt
to darkness. Bright lights reset that clock instantly.
So your phone is not your friend here. Once your
eyes settle in, the sky begins to open up. Stars
multiply and patterns emerge. You'll first notice
that some stars twinkle and others don't. That's
not a trick of your vision, it's physics. Stars
twinkle because they're incredibly far away,
pinpoints of light distorted by Earth's atmosphere.
Planets don't twinkle as much because they're
closer and they appear as tiny disks instead
of points. That single observation, twinkling
versus steady, lets you identify planets without
charts, apps, or even guesswork. As you get more
familiar with the sky, you'll instinctively recognize
the visible planets by their brightness and even
color. Binoculars, by the way, are not a compromise.
They're one of the most powerful tools in astronomy.
They're portable, intuitive, and perfectly matched
to how humans naturally look at the sky. Right
now, I consider myself a binocular astronomer.
I don't even own a telescope at the moment, and
I consider that a feature, not a bug. If all
you ever use are your eyes and a pair of binoculars,
you're doing real astronomy. And binoculars have
advantages over scopes. You can just aim them
up and scan around without messing with a tripod,
a finder scope, eyepiece magnifications, or polar
alignments. Just grab a seat in a lounge chair
and sweep across the sky. The sensation is that
of flying through the stars. If you have a steady
hand, you can make out the moons of Jupiter in
a nice pair of binoculars. Star clusters are
a real pleasure and from a dark site you'll be
able to see the bright core of the Andromeda
galaxy, its photons reaching our eyes after more
than two and a half million years in transit.
Then there are the stories of the sky, constellations.
They're how humans imposed meaning on randomness
long before we understood stars as suns and galaxies
as islands of light. Different cultures drew
different shapes in the same sky, echoing their
history and myths. Modern star charts sometimes
make constellations feel like tests. Connect
the dots correctly, or you've failed. And that's
the wrong mindset. Constellations are anchors
that give you a roadmap across the sky. There's
no right or wrong way to view them. In January,
there's no better anchor than Orion, the legendary
hunter. You're probably familiar with the three
bright stars in a row that form his distinct
belt. You don't need to memorize his mythology.
You don't need to trace every star. You just
need to recognize him as a landmark. Once you
find Orion, the rest of the winter sky starts
to make sense. The sky stops being a wall of
lights and starts becoming a landscape. That's
the moment astronomy becomes personal. We'll
talk more about Orion and his secrets in a moment.
Now, most of us live under light -polluted skies.
That's simply a fact of modern life. Light pollution
limits what you can see, but it doesn't erase
the sky, and it's not a reason not to look up.
There's a lot of astronomy that can be enjoyed
under a compromised sky. The moon still commands
attention. Planets still shine steadily. Bright
stars still punch through the glow. You'll see
the larger, brighter constellations like Orion
and the Big Dipper. Urban astronomy is still
astronomy, and if you wait for perfect darkness,
you may never begin. If you learn the sky where
you are, Every improvement feels like a gift.
When you finally venture out to a dark site,
you'll be even more in awe of what's up there.
So, speaking of what's overhead, let's see what
awaits us in this first full week of the new
year. Right now the moon is near full. It peaked
as the January full moon, the Wolf Moon, around
January the 3rd, meaning it's still bright and
dominant in the early evening sky. That brightness
will wash out fainter stars, but it's also a
striking sight all on its own, rising just after
sunset and moving westward through the night.
One of the easiest objects for new stargazers
this week is Jupiter. It's the brightest planet
visible right now, rising soon after dusk and
shining persistently through the night. Jupiter
is approaching opposition on January the 10th,
which means Earth is between it and the Sun,
so it's up in the sky all night, climbing high
and at its peak brightness for the year. When
you see a bright, non -twinkling star high in
the southeast to south, that's Jupiter. If you
do have a telescope, even a modest one, Jupiter
is a great first planet to explore, but keep
your expectations reasonable. It won't look like
a Voyager image. You should be able to discern
a tiny disk, maybe with several cloud bands.
Its Galilean moons will be on either side of
it, resembling a tiny solar system all by itself.
You aren't likely to see a lot of color, if any.
As with any telescopic observation, patience
is key. As a beginner, lining up a scope on a
planet for the first time is difficult and can
feel like an hour of frustration, punctuated
by two minutes of wonder. I've always found it
helpful to use a low magnification eyepiece that
gives you a wider field of view, then step up
to a more powerful magnification once you have
your object in the frame. Not far from Jupiter,
in the same part of the sky, you'll also find
the familiar twin stars Castor, and Pollux of
the constellation Gemini. Pollux sits a little
closer to Jupiter in the sky, and together they
form a neat visual triangle you can pick out
on a clear night. If you face south -southeast
after sunset, you'll see the familiar Winter
Hexagon, an asterism made of very bright stars.
It includes Sirius, the brightest star in the
night sky. Betelgeuse in Orion, Aldebaran in
Taurus, and Procyon near the horizon. These bright
stars help your eye navigate without charts,
and from their arrangement you can start to recognize
the larger patterns of the winter sky. Speaking
of Orion, he's unmistakable right now. Look for
his three -star belt slanted across the late
winter sky. Just below and slightly to the left
of Orion's belt is Sirius, blazing brighter than
anything else overhead. If you're a brand new
observer, here's something special to look out
for once you've located Orion. Hanging just below
Orion's belt, where his sword would be, you'll
find one of the most famous objects in the night
sky, the Great Nebula in Orion. On a dark night,
with good eyesight, you may be able to see it
with the naked eye as a faint, fuzzy patch, something
that looks a little out of place among the pinpoints
of stars. But if you have binoculars, this is
where things get interesting. Through binoculars,
the Great Nebula blooms into view as a glowing
cloud, soft, uneven, and unmistakably not a star.
You're looking at a vast, stellar nursery. a
region where new stars are actively forming more
than a thousand light years away. This is often
the first deep sky object people ever see, and
for good reason. It's bright, it's easy to find,
and it doesn't require expensive equipment. The
first time you spot it, there's a quiet realization
that tends to follow. That fuzzy glow isn't a
smudge on the lens. It's not an illusion. It's
a real place in the universe. If astronomy ever
stops feeling abstract, it's usually right here,
standing under Orion looking at a cloud of gas
and dust where stars are being born, with nothing
more than your eyes or even a simple pair of
binoculars. Another event happening this week
is the tail end of the Quandran -Tid meteor shower.
Its peak was just before January the 4th, and
unfortunately the bright moon will drown out
many of the faint meteors this year. But if you're
in a very dark location with good eyes and patience,
you might still glimpse a few shooting stars
distributed around the sky. It just takes some
patience. So here's a suggestion for 2026, and
it's not a resolution, but just something to
practice. Once a week, take some time to look
up from the same place at the same time. Look
for one thing, maybe a star, a planet, the moon,
or a familiar constellation. Notice how they
shift night to night. Over time, something subtle
happens. The sky starts to feel familiar. You
stop asking, what am I supposed to see? And start
noticing what's already there. In the weeks ahead,
we'll return to our usual show rhythm, specific
objects, events, and so on. But everything we
do this year grows out of what we talked about
tonight. Astronomy is not a performance and it's
not a race. The sky will be there tomorrow. The
sky is patient and it'll wait for you. Before
we leave this topic, I wanted to mention some
resources over at our website, StarTrails .Show,
in case you've never visited it. I've recently
added some features that you may find useful.
New and even returning listeners may enjoy the
new Start Here page, where I've flagged some
of my favorite must -listen episodes, along with
tons of links and resources you might find helpful.
I've included links to some of my favorite Night
Sky apps, useful websites, and more. And if you're
just starting out, I think you'll enjoy the Stellarium
app. It's basically a planetarium in your pocket,
and their web application is very useful as well.
Also, if you like to listen to music while you
stargaze, check out my new music project Liminal
Horizon. It's spacey ambient music designed for
dark skies, and you've probably already heard
some of it in recent shows. Click the music link
in the site navigation up top to access it. After
a quick break, I'll mention a book I think you'll
all enjoy and will journey back in time to 1860
for the discovery of a planet that didn't actually
exist. Vulcan. Stay with us. Welcome back. Many
many episodes ago. I floated the idea of a sort
of Star Trails book club and I selected the book
Nightwatch by Terrence Dickinson for the discussion
Then about six months elapsed and I finally ordered
the book Then the book sat on my shelf for another
six months. I nearly forgot about it Well over
the holiday break. I finally started reading
it I'll have a lot more to say about it in an
upcoming episode, but the big takeaway here is
you owe it to yourself to read this book if you're
interested in stargazing, and it makes a fine
companion to this podcast. In fact, if this podcast
were a class, I think I'd want Nightwatch to
be its textbook. And here's why. The author,
Dickinson, has crafted this book especially for
backyard stargazers. There's really no jargon
in the book. There's no math or complex explanations.
It's richly illustrated, and thumbing through
it reminded me of the old National Geographic
hardbound tome Our Universe, which kept me in
endless awe as a kid in the early 1980s. Now,
I've done more than 90 episodes of this podcast.
I'm certainly no expert astronomer, but I like
to think I'm somewhat informed of the subject
matter. Still, every time I pick up Nightwatch,
I learn something new, even in a book aimed at
beginners. Here's an example. I didn't know that
our sun is larger than about 90 % of the other
stars in the galaxy. Yet nearly every star we
see at night here on Earth with our naked eye
is much larger than our sun. Because space is
an infinitely large place, only the largest stars,
the Leviathans of the Milky Way, are the ones
we can actually see. And every chapter contains
revelations like this. In an age where reading
a physical book seems like something from a bygone
era and night sky maps are available as augmented
reality in a phone app, you might be wondering,
why bother? but the book is really that good.
I'm feverishly assembling notes from my reading
and a full review is coming soon, but get a copy
if you can. I think you'll really find it helpful.
Before I go, I'd like to point out a moment in
astronomy that occurred around this time, 166
years ago, back in 1860. On January the 2nd of
that year, a respected astronomer made an announcement
that seemed, at the time, entirely reasonable.
The astronomer was Urbain Le Verrier, the same
man who successfully predicted the existence
of Neptune purely through mathematics. When Neptune
was later observed, almost exactly where Le Verrier
said it would be, his reputation soared. He had
found a planet without ever seeing it. We actually
discussed this way back in episode 38, in a segment
on orbital resonances. So, when Le Verrier claimed
there was another planet, this one orbiting closer
to the Sun than Mercury, people listened. He
called it Vulcan. Astronomers had noticed something
strange about Mercury's orbit. Over time, the
point where Mercury comes closest to the Sun,
its perihelion slowly shifts. That gradual rotation
of the orbit is called precession. Most of Mercury's
precession could be explained by the gravitational
pull of the other planets, but a small portion,
about 43 arc seconds per century, remained unaccounted
for. Using Newtonian physics, the simplest explanation
was another unseen planet tugging on Mercury.
Just as Neptune explained Uranus' odd motion,
Vulcan would explain Mercury's. And for decades,
astronomers searched. Some observers reported
fleeting sightings of Vulcan during solar eclipses.
Others claimed to see tiny dark dots crossing
the face of the Sun. Vulcan lived in that uncomfortable
space between plausible and real. Never fully
confirmed, but never fully dismissed. Remember,
the area close to the sun is notoriously difficult
to observe, owing to the sun's glare and the
compact orbit of objects there. That's why we
rarely catch Mercury in the sky, and when we
do, it's near the setting sun, low on the horizon.
The breakthrough came in 1915 when Albert Einstein
published his theory of general relativity. Einstein
showed that gravity isn't just a force between
objects, it's the warping of space and time itself.
Near something as massive as the Sun, space -time
curves enough to subtly alter Mercury's orbit.
When Einstein ran the numbers, general relativity
predicted exactly the missing amount of Mercury's
perihelion precession. No extra planet required.
Vulcan didn't disappear because astronomers stopped
looking hard enough. It vanished because the
universe turned out to be stranger and more elegant
than anyone had imagined. Today, Vulcan survives
only in fiction, most famously as the homeworld
of Spock in Star Trek. But for a brief moment
in history it was a serious answer to a real
problem. That's going to do it for this week.
If you found this episode interesting please
share it with a friend who might enjoy it. The
easiest way to do that is by sending folks to
our website Star Trails dot show and if you want
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follow Star Trails on blue sky and YouTube links
are in the show notes Until we meet again beneath
the stars clear skies everyone