Howdy Star Gazers and welcome to this episode
of Star Trails. My name is Drew and I'll be your
guide to the night sky for the week of January
the 25th through the 31st. This week we take
a break from science to ground ourselves in the
reality of the night sky and how to stay motivated
when the stars aren't cooperating. I'll talk
about frustrations when dealing with the night
sky and how to manage expectations when it comes
to the myth of the perfect night sky. Later in
the show we'll survey the celestial objects worth
our attention this week and check in with the
sun after several days of intense activity last
week. Whether you're tuning in from the backyard
or the balcony, I'm glad you're here. So grab
a comfortable spot under the night sky and let's
get started. This week is the final episode in
our January arc of shows aimed at brand -new
astronomers. We've covered the basics of how
to begin stargazing, we took a deep dive into
one of the monster constellations of the winter,
Orion, and just last week we covered how the
sky moves, how planets wander, how stars rise
and set, and how nothing above us is ever truly
still. In this episode, we're going to dial back
the astronomy and maybe get a little meta. This
isn't about seeing particular objects or how
to observe a nebula. It's not about how the sky
behaves, but rather how we behave under it. Astronomy,
especially the kind practiced by amateurs like
us, has a quiet unspoken problem. And this problem
is one that often causes frustration, and in
some cases, keeps us indoors on nights when we
could be observing. The idea I'm circling here
is the myth of the perfect night. And the perfect
night looks something like this. Clear skies
from horizon to horizon. Steady air. Everything
visible exactly when you want it to be. The telescope
works flawlessly. Your charts make sense. And
your patience holds. It's the night we imagine
when we're stuck at work watching clouds roll
by on a weather app. It's the night social media
seems to promise is just one dark side away.
And it's the night many of us quietly measure
ourselves against. The problem is, almost no
real night ever looks like that. And if we're
not careful, that expectation can quietly drain
the joy out of this whole thing. There's a kind
of lie baked into how astronomy is often presented.
It's not an intentional lie, but rather a lie
by omission. Looking at images of space online,
especially those taken by fellow amateurs, can
be awe -inspiring. We see the results. We see
the final images. We see the moments where everything
worked. When a dozen hours of integration in
a light -polluted sky somehow produced the most
gorgeous image of Andromeda you've ever seen.
What we don't see is the waiting, the clouds
that showed up at dusk and never quite left,
the bad seeing that turned Jupiter into a boiling
mess, the targets that were technically up but
practically unreachable. Nobody posts the night
they spent mostly checking their telescope's
collimation and wondering if the haze was getting
worse. Nobody posts the hour they waited for
the sky to settle, only to pack up tired and
cold. Not because those nights are shameful,
but because they don't photograph well, they
don't make for good stories or social media fodder.
And yet, those nights are the rule, not the exception.
And let's be real, most observing sessions are
compromised in some way. The atmosphere rarely
cooperates. Light pollution always finds a way
back in. Fatigue sets limits, and astronomy happens
in the margin of imperfection. There's another
trick at work here, and it's a very human one.
Memory edits. Speaking from personal experience,
I can recall nights at the dark site where it
felt like the glowing gas of the Milky Way was
just hundreds of feet above us, and so bright
that it already looked like a long exposure.
Or the time when you gazed at Jupiter or Saturn
and it felt like you were on a spaceship on a
close approach. I'm not making this up. These
are my own memories, and while I know they're
somewhat false, they are in my mind's eye, representing
some of the best nights of observing I've ever
experienced. Over time, our minds smooth the
rough edges off past observing sessions. We remember
that we saw Saturn, but not the frustration beforehand.
We remember that meteor shower, but not the clouds
that wiped out half the night. The past becomes
cleaner than it ever really was, and then the
present feels broken by comparison. A newcomer
looks up, struggles, misses something, and thinks,
I must be doing this wrong. An experienced observer
has an off night and wonders what's changed,
even when nothing has. This is what it's always
been like, and here's the uncomfortable truth
that no one really advertises. Astronomy does
not reward effort on demand. You can do everything
right and still come away with very little to
show for it. And if your expectation is that
effort guarantees payoff, astronomy will eventually
feel cruel. I love star parties and I try to
attend all the ones put on by my local club.
I've had amazing nights with perfect seeing the
darkest skies imaginable. So dark that it felt
like I was walking around in a three -dimensional
star field. But the last three times I've attended
it's been fairly rotten in regards to seeing.
Humidity in the air collects as dew on scopes
and turns black skies into a gray washout. Low
-lying clouds drift in and wreck the one -shot
at seeing the hot comet everyone's been chasing.
And yes, sometimes it just rains. Sometimes we
arrive early, set up scopes, wait for hours,
and then just tear them back down 30 minutes
after dusk because the conditions aren't working.
If any of this sounds like Sisyphus pushing a
rock up a hill, you're not wrong. Some people
eventually drift away from the hobby because
of these frustrations. That's the myth of the
perfect night, and it does more damage than clouds
ever could. So if that night doesn't really exist,
if most sessions are compromised, if frustration
and waiting are built into the experience, then
what are astronomers actually doing all night?
If you're picturing non -stop discovery, object
after object, revelation after revelation, I
want to gently reset that image. Most of the
night is spent waiting. Waiting for darkness
to fully arrive, waiting for your optics to cool,
waiting to see if the atmosphere settles down,
and waiting to find out whether the forecast
was lying to you. This isn't a failure state,
it's just the default. And that can be disorienting,
especially when you're new. It doesn't feel productive.
Nothing dramatic is happening. The sky isn't
putting on a show yet. And maybe it never will.
More doubt sets in. When will I ever get to use
that new telescope I spent thousands of dollars
on? Or, and this applies to me, why can't I ever
get a clear night to shoot some astrophotos worth
posting? But this waiting is part of the work.
It's how you learn the rhythm of a night, how
you notice subtle changes. Remember, the sky
is a living system and it has moods. Then there's
adjusting, adjusting focus, adjusting balance,
adjusting expectations. Something is always slightly
off. The finder isn't quite aligned. The eyepiece
that worked beautifully last week suddenly feels
wrong. Your red light is too bright. Your red
light is too dim. The gloves are too thick. The
chair is never at the right height. And my knees
are taking abuse from trying to dial in the right
view on my camera. And by the way, why the hell
can't I get these stars in tack sharp focus?
Astronomy is an endless series of small corrections.
Like anything else, it requires practice, preparation,
and a deep insight into the workings of your
gear. And there will always be problems. You're
learning how to work with imperfect tools under
imperfect conditions. You're learning how much
precision is good enough. You're learning when
to stop chasing perfection and start observing
what's actually there. A lot of the night is
also spent trying and failing and trying again.
You hunt for something faint, you think you see
it, then you lose it, then you wonder if it was
ever there at all. This is how visual astronomy
works. The line between seeing and not seeing
is often thin and your brain is part of the instrument.
Learning to trust it while also questioning it
is a strange but quiet discipline. Maybe you
saw a faint galaxy or nebula, maybe you didn't,
and yet that still counts. A bad day doing astronomy
has to be better than a good day at work, right?
There's also repetition, which rarely gets talked
about. You observe the same objects again and
again, not because you forgot them, but because
each visit teaches you something new. The sky
changes, your experience changes, your eye changes.
You'll develop favorites, just like I mentioned
in a past episode how I always check in on my
favorites, Orion, the Pleiades, and Andromeda.
Progress in astronomy doesn't usually look like
novelty. It looks like familiarity. It looks
like knowing exactly where something should be,
even if you never quite get the view you hoped
for that night. And yes, sometimes there's boredom.
Long stretches where nothing dramatic happens
when you're cold or tired or distracted, and
this is where a lot of people assume they're
doing something wrong. Boredom is just curiosity
without payoff yet. It's the cost of staying
present when the universe isn't offering instant
reward. Astronomers learn that attention itself
is the practice. And this brings me back around
to star parties. From the outside, they look
ideal. Dark skies, great company, rows of telescopes
pointed upward. But anyone who's actually been
to a few knows the truth. There are logistics.
There's exhaustion. There are nights when the
sky doesn't cooperate at all. There are evenings
when you spend more time talking than observing.
And that's not a failure of the event. Some of
my favorite nights at a star party had very little
to do with space at all. Sometimes it's smoking
cigars and drinking bourbon with more experienced
observers and trying to absorb all the information
you can from them. Sometimes it's picking up
a guitar and strumming chords over a folk tune
while the heady aroma of grilled meat wafts between
the observatories. That's the reality of bringing
humans, equipment, and weather together in one
place and hoping for the best. Some of the most
meaningful nights aren't the ones where you saw
the most. They're the ones where you learned
something, shared a frustration, or simply stayed
out longer than you thought you would. Most astronomers
aren't chasing spectacle all night. They're building
a relationship with the sky in their own personal
way. For me, that means grabbing my camera and
tripod and wading into waist -deep foliage in
a farm field to shoot the Milky Way while quietly
meditating on my place in the universe. For others,
that's setting up a smart scope, sharing binoculars
with a neighbor, or trading whiskey recommendations
amid talk of T. Coroni Borealis. This is the
reality of our hobby. Waiting, adjusting, failing,
trying again. boredom mixed with curiosity. The
goal was never the perfect night. The goal was
learning how to keep showing up. Here's the quiet
shift that happens once you let go of the idea
of the perfect night. A bad night of astronomy
starts to look very different. Astronomy was
never really about extraction. It isn't about
pulling something out of the sky and taking it
home with you. It's about showing up, paying
attention, and learning how to be present with
something that doesn't respond to pressure. Even
a night where you packed up early still reminded
you why you came out in the first place. An evening
where nothing worked still deepened your understanding
of how fragile those perfect moments really are.
There's a temptation to think of astronomy as
a transaction. I give the sky my time and effort
and in return it gives me wonder. But the sky
doesn't work that way. Sometimes it gives you
a breathtaking view. Sometimes it gives you frustration
and sometimes it gives you nothing at all. And
yet we keep going back because occasionally we
do have a rewarding experience. You're not doing
astronomy wrong. This is just how the hobby works.
If you need immediate gratification, just visit
a planetarium. Astronomers keep coming back out
under compromised skies, not for perfection or
productivity or for content. But because there's
value in returning to something that doesn't
bend itself to your schedule. Because there's
meaning in attention, even when the universe
is indifferent. After a quick break, we'll be
back to go over what you can expect to see in
the night sky this week. Stay with us. Welcome
back. We begin this period with a first quarter
moon late tonight, meaning about half the lunar
disk is illuminated and rising. Until the 31st,
the moon will wax toward gibbous, brightening
each night and dominating the later evening sky.
A waxing gibbous moon can interfere with deep
sky observing, but it's excellent for lunar surface
detail and earth shine around sunset. Jupiter
will be prominent throughout this week, still
glowing brightly after its recent opposition
earlier in January and visible all night. It
sits in Gemini near the bright stars Castor and
Pollux. Saturn will be an evening planet after
sunset, fading toward late evening as the week
progresses. Uranus and Neptune remain in the
evening sky in late January, but require binoculars
or a small telescope to pick out. Be sure to
check in with an app like Stellarium for the
exact locations. Mercury, Venus, and Mars are
too close to the Sun's glare during this period
to be practical targets from most latitudes.
Some notable deep sky objects are up during this
period. Cruise through Gemini for lesser observed
open clusters like NGC 2158, a compact but interesting
cluster that's about 2 billion years old. It's
located immediately southwest of another low
-key target. Messier 35, also known as the Shoebuckle
Cluster. Lepus the Hare, just south of Orion,
is subtle to the eye but contains a few faint
stars and can serve as a gateway to the faint
galaxy NGC 1964 on dark nights. If you can pull
it out of the darkness, NGC 1964 is a lovely
barred spiral galaxy about 65 million light years
away. Eridanus, the celestial river stretching
from Orion toward the south, hosts scattered
galaxy fields such as NGC 1533 and other magnitude
10 to 11 galaxies that reward patient binocular
or small telescope sweeps. NGC 1533 is a lenticular
galaxy about 62 million light years away and
resembles an oval blob with a bright core. By
the way, when we refer to an object as Messier
33 or NGC 2158, we're referring to their catalogued
names. NGC means New General Catalog and Messier
objects are named for the French astronomer Charles
Messier who cataloged 110 objects in the 18th
century. Even though major meteor showers like
the quantarids peaked a few weeks earlier, observing
sporadic meteors and satellites remains rewarding
under dark skies, particularly earlier in the
evening before the moon rises. Use a nice pair
of binoculars after dusk and scan around the
sky. With some patience, you're almost certain
to see dozens of Starlink satellites zipping
around. Space enthusiasts can point their star
charts toward Ophiuchus before dawn to locate
the rough region of Voyager 1, a fun conceptual
target even though it's impossible to see with
optical equipment. It's just nice knowing it's
out there. The Sun turned the dial up to 11 last
week, producing one of the most energetic space
weather events in years. On January 18th and
19th, a very strong X -class solar eruption sent
a fast -moving cloud of magnetized plasma straight
toward Earth. When that coronal mass ejection
slammed into our planet's magnetic field on the
19th, it stirred up a severe geomagnetic storm,
officially rated G4, meaning the disturbance
was intense enough to seriously shake Earth's
magnetic environment. Under the right conditions,
storms like this can drive auroras well outside
the usual high latitude zones. And, indeed, reports
and photos from around the northern hemisphere
showed the aurora borealis lighting up skies
farther south than usual on the night of the
storm. Observers in parts of Europe, the U .S.,
Southwest, and even mid -latitude regions shared
images of unusual auroral activity, even though
it didn't quite reach as far south as some forecast
had hoped. Part of the reason the aurora displays
were hit or miss for more southerly viewers comes
down to magnetic geometry. Even though the storm
was strong overall, the exact orientation of
the incoming magnetic fields didn't always line
up in a way that let the energy pour into Earth's
upper atmosphere everywhere. That meant the auroras
ended up being very bright where conditions were
favorable, but more confined than some early
predictions suggested. Solar physicists are calling
this one of the most significant space weather
events in the last couple of decades because
there was an associated solar radiation storm,
a prolonged high -energy particle flood that
hasn't been seen at this scale in more than 20
years. If you spotted or photographed an aurora,
I'd love to hear about it. Drop me a line over
at the show website or ping me on Blue Sky. And
remember, on the next episode, I'll be talking
about the first three chapters of Nightwatch,
our so -called book club selection for the beginning
of the year. If you have the book, you can blow
through these sections quickly. 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, StarTrails .Show.
And if you want to support the show, use the
link on the site to buy me a coffee. It really
helps. Be sure to follow Star Trails on Blue
Sky and YouTube. Links are in the show notes.
Until we meet again beneath the stars, clear
skies everyone.