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Catching the best sky watching events for the coming year 2025.

Comet C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS captured over the McMath-Pierce Solar Telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory, Arizona. Credit: Robert Sparks

How about that eclipse in 2024? Certainly, the Great North American Eclipse of April 8th 2024 was one for the ages, instilling the eclipse-chasing bug in many a new skywatching fan. Now, for the bad news: 2025 is a rare, totality free year, featuring only a pair of remote partial solar eclipses. The good news is, there’s lots more in store to see in the sky in 2025, with a pair of fine total lunar eclipses, Mars at its best, and lunar occultations galore. And hey, the Sun is still mighty active, and the cosmos does still owe us another fine comet.

2024: The Year in Brief

To be sure, the April eclipse was spectacular… but 2024 was almost more notable for the unpredictable. First, the Sun unleashed two epic solar storms, sending amazing aurora displays southward towards latitudes and populations of skywatchers that rarely see them. Then, Comet C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS survived perihelion in late September, and went on to put on a fine show for northern hemisphere watchers at dusk in October. All of this transpired against a record number of rocket launches worldwide, as SpaceX and its competitors race to fill the sky with Starlink and its ilk.

Will artificial stars outnumber real ones in the coming generation? We’re differently witness to an evolving sky, as the clockwork gears unfold in the drama of the heavens above us.

The Rules

First up, some ground rules. We think of this list as a ‘best of the best’ for the year, distilled down to top events, with a little strangeness thrown in to make things unique. Think conjunctions closer than a degree, comets brighter than +6th magnitude, etc. as a sort of ‘101 Top Astronomy Events for the Year.’

The Top 12 Events for 2025

Such is astronomy and skywatching in 2025. First, here’s a quick subjective rundown of the dozen very best skywatching events to look forward to in the coming year:

-The peak for Solar Cycle 25 continues

-Mars at opposition in January

-Venus rules the dusk sky at the start of the year, and transitions to the dawn sky

-A once a generation Major Lunar Standstill sees the Moon swinging wide north-to-south

-Saturn’s rings are edge on as seen from our Earthly vantage point

-Comet G3 ATLAS ‘may’ break negative magnitudes in January

-Two total lunar eclipses for the year worldwide

-Lunar occultations worldwide for the stars Spica, Regulus and Antares

-A rare ‘triple year’ for lunar-stellar occultations

-The Moon meets up with Saturn and Mars multiple times in 2025

-A rare, ‘smiling emoticon’ triple conjunction involving the Moon, Regulus and Venus on September 19th

-The Moon occults sections of Messier 45 (The Pleiades) on every pass for 2025

Aurorae light up the sky over Ottawa, Canada. Credit: Andrew Symes The Sun, the Seasons and the Solar Cycle in 2025

We’re just coming off of the historic solar maximum in 2024 for Solar Cycle Number 25, and the wild ride is far from over. On an 11-year period from one maxima to the next, the Sun doubtless has more in store for 2025 in terms of space weather and aurora. We’re now on a long, slow downslide towards solar minimum in 2029-2030.

Earth reaches perihelion on January 4th at 0.98333 AU in 2025, and aphelion on July 3rd at 1.01664 AU from the Sun.

Seasons in 2025 start on:

March 20th (northward equinox)

June 20th (northward solstice)

September 22nd (southward equinox)

December 21st (southward solstice)

The Moon in 2025

2025 is a ‘hilly’ year for the path of the Moon, as we cross what’s known as a Major Lunar Standstill. The actual node crossing for the event occurs on January 29th. The Moon’s orbit is inclined a little over five degrees relative to the ecliptic plane. The entire orbit of our Moon is also dragged (mainly by the Sun) one revolution every 18.6-years, in what’s known as lunar nodal precession. All this means that once every 18.6 years, the Moon ‘swings wide’ in the sky, as the tilt of its orbit is applied to the Earth’s versus the ecliptic plane.

A rare ‘Lunar Standstill’, seen down the Sistine Axis in Rome, Italy in late 2024. Credit: Gianluca Masi. A ‘Hilly Year’

We just had the northernmost Full Moon the decade on December 15th, 2024, and we’re due for the southernmost Full Moon on June 11th.

Major and Minor Lunar Standstills for the first half of the 21st century. Credit: Dave Dickinson

The year is also rare in that a Black Moon (in the old-timey sense as the third New Moon in an astronomical season with four) occurs on August 23rd, and the Harvest Moon nearest to the September Equinox occurs in October, on the 7th.

Moon Phases for 2025 (in Universal Time)Closest Perigee–May 26 1:53 UT (357,309 km)Most Distant Apogee-Oct 24 15:31 UT (405,614 km)New MoonBrown LunationFull MoonNotesDec 30 – 22:28 UT (2024)1262Jan 13 – 22:28 UT1st Full Moon of 2025Jan 29 – 12:37 UT1263Feb 12 – 13:54 UT
Feb 28 – 00:47 UT1264Mar 14 – 6:56 UTTotal Lunar Eclipse (Mar14)Mar 29 – 11:00 UT1265Apr 13– 00:24 UTPartial Solar Eclipse (March 29)Apr 27 – 19:33 UT1266May 12 – 16:58 UT
May 27 – 3:04 UT1267Jun 11 – 7:46 UTClosest Full Moon of the year, Southernmost Full Moon of 2025Jun 25 – 10:34 UT1268Jul 10 – 20:39 UT
Jul 24 – 19:12 UT1269Aug 9 – 7:57 UT
Aug 23 – 6:07 UT1271Sep 7 – 18:11 UTTotal Lunar Eclipse (Sep 7) 3rd New (Black) Moon in SeasonSep 21 -19:55 UT1272Oct 7 – 3:49 UTOctober Harvest Moon Partial Solar Eclipse (Sep 21)Oct 21 – 12:26 UT1273Nov 5 -13:20 UT
Nov 20 – 6:48 UT1274Dec 4 – 23:15 UTLong Night’s Full Moon Most distant Moon of the yearDec 20 – 1:44 UT1275Jan 3 – 10:04 UT1st Full Moon of 2026 Eclipses in 2025 Totality! As seen on May 16th, 2022. Credit: Andrew Symes.

As mentioned previous, 2025 features 4 eclipses—the minimum number than can occur in a calendar year. These are 2 total lunar and 2 partial solar eclipses, bookending two eclipse seasons in 2025:

Circumstances for the total lunar eclipse on the night of March 13-14th. Credit: Fred Espenak/GSFC/NASA

-A total lunar eclipse on the night of March 13-14th for the Americas;

-A partial solar eclipse for March 29th spanning the North Atlantic;

-A total lunar eclipse on the night of September 7-8th centered on Central Asia;

-A partial solar eclipse on September 21st for New Zealand and the South Pacific.

An animation of the March 29th partial solar eclipse. Note that the umbral shadow of the Moon juuuust misses the Earth (!) Credit: NASA/GSFC/A.T. Sinclair. The Inner Planets in 2025

Fleeting Mercury reaches greatest elongation six times in 2025 (3 in the dawn and 3 in the dusk) marking the best time to spy the elusive world:

-March 8th – Mercury is 18º east (dusk)

-April 21st – Mercury is 27º west (dawn, best for 2025)

-July 4th -Mercury is 26º east (dusk)

-August 19th – Mercury is 18º west (dawn)

-October 29th – Mercury is 24º east (dusk)

-December 8th – Mercury is 21º west (dawn)

Meanwhile, Venus is busy in 2025. The brilliant world starts off dominating the evening sky, reaching greatest elongation 47 degrees east of the Sun on January 10th and shining at magnitude -4.5. This is the best apparition of Venus since 2017. Venus then takes the plunge towards the Sun, passing less than nine degrees north of the Sun on March 21st-22nd. This is a good time to try the challenging feat of seeing Venus near inferior conjunction… just make sure that the Sun is physically blocked from view.

Venus near inferior conjunction in 2020. Credit: Shahrin Ahmad.

Venus then goes on to a fine dawn appearance for the remainder of 2025, reaching greatest elongation 46 degrees west of the Sun on June 25th.

The Outer Planets in 2025

The big ticket planetary event kicks off 2025, when Mars reaches opposition on January 16th. To be sure, this opposition is part of an unfavorable cycle as the Red Planet is currently moving away from us towards aphelion on April 16th, 2025, but noteworthy as it marks the biannual Mars observing season. At its best, Mars shines at -1.5 magnitude and presents a disk 15” across.

Mars from 2020. Credit: Andrew Symes.

Beyond opposition, Mars spends most of the rest of 2025 in the evening sky, and reaches solar conjunction on January 9th, 2026.

Jupiter in 2025

Jupiter reached opposition on December 7th, 2024, skips in 2025, and heads to opposition next on January 10th, 2026. Jupiter last performed such a bypass in 2013. Callisto (the only major moon that can ‘miss’ Jove) starts shadow-casting and passing back into Jupiter’s shadow on May 11th. This is a prelude to another bidecadal mutual eclipse season for Jupiter’s moons starting in 2026.

We have three double shadow transit seasons to watch for in 2025:

(Thanks to John Flannery and the late John O’Neill who edited the ‘Sky-High’ publication for the Irish Astronomical Society for years for calculating and passing this info on).

-February 25th (Ganymede-Europa)

-October 13th (Ganymede-Io)

-October 29th (Io-Europa)

-November 5th (Io-Europa)

-November 21st (Callisto-Io)

Also watch for a unique event, when only Callisto is visible on October 6th. Jupiter reaches solar conjunction on June 24th, transitioning from the dusk to dawn sky.

Saturn in 2025

Saturn starts off 2025 in the evening sky, and passes behind the Sun and into the dawn sky on March 12th. Saturn reaches opposition once on September 21st, marking the best time to spy the ringed world.

The changing tilt of Saturn’s rings. Credit: Shahrin Ahmad.

Saturn’s rings are edge on on March 23rd, 2025, providing us a twice every 29-year view of an apparently ‘ring-less’ Saturn… just think how bland the solar system would be, if Saturn always appeared thus?

Ring plane-crossing also means it’s time to see Saturn’s moons transiting across its disk. These are tougher to spot versus the Galilean moons of Jupiter, though shadow transits of 0.8” Titan are in the range of backyard telescopes. Use the IMCCE’s site to generate shadow transits for Titan in 2025.

Looking outward, Uranus reaches opposition on November 21st in the constellation Taurus, Neptune passes opposition on September 23rd in Pisces, and distant Pluto hits opposition on July 25th in Capricornus.

The Best Conjunctions and Groupings in 2025

2025 is an intriguing year for lunar-planetary meetups. First off, you have a rare chance to see all of the naked eye planets (from Mercury to Saturn) in the evening sky at once in mid-March, as Mercury briefly completes the scene.

The sky scene looking eastward on the morning of April 25th.

The best planet-versus-planet pairing occurs on August 12th with Jupiter and Venus just 54’ apart, 36 degrees from the Sun at dawn. The best planet-versus-bright star conjunction for the year happens when Venus passes 30’ north of Regulus on September 19th, also at dawn. Incidentally, a remote region in the Siberian Arctic will actually see the 5% illuminated waning crescent Moon cover the pair simultaneously, while the rest of us will see a skewed, ‘smiley face’ emoticon grouping hanging in the dawn sky, demonstrating that perhaps the Universe does indeed have a sly sense of humor.

Venus vs. Regulus on September 19th. Credit: Dave Dickinson

A triple conjunction grouping of this sort won’t grace the skies of our fair planet again until February 13th, 2056, when the Moon, Mars and Mercury meet up.

Looking eastward on the morning of August 20th. Credit: Stellarium Bright Planets vs. Clusters

Three planets that transit the Beehive Cluster (Messier 44) in 2025:

-May 4th Mars vs. M44 (83º from the Sun at dusk)

-July 2nd Mercury vs. M44 (25º from the Sun at dusk)

-August 31st Venus vs. M44 (31º from the Sun at dawn)

The Moon occults Saturn in 2014. Credit: Paul Stewart

Planets Occulted by the Moon in 2025

The Moon occults 4 naked eye planets (all except Jupiter) a total of 7 times in 2025:

DatePlanetMoon PhaseRegionNotesJan 4Saturn+25%Europe
Jan 14Mars+99%N. America/Africa
Feb 1Saturn+13%Alaskan Arctic
Feb 9Mars+91%N. Europe/Asia
Mar 1Mercury+2%Central Pacific
Jun 30Mars+24%S. America
Sep 19Venus-6%NW N. AmericaSee Venus (daytime) The visibility footprint for the January 14th occultation of Mars by the Moon. Bright Stars Occulted by the Moon in 2025

2025 is also rare in that the Moon will occult three of the four +1st magnitude stars that it can occult: Spica (11 times), Antares (12 times) and Regulus (6 times). Only Aldebaran sits this one out. Spica occultations are on their way out and headed towards the Antarctic region in 2025, while Regulus events are just sliding on to the scene to the north from the Arctic. Meanwhile, Spica occultations are still ongoing in 2025, and run out in November.

DateStarMoon PhaseRegionNotesJan 21Spica-51%W. Africa/Atlantic
Jan 25Antares-16%Indian Ocean
Feb 17Spica-77%South Pacific
Feb 21Antares-41%S. South America
Mar 16Spica-95%E. Africa/Indian Ocean
Mar 20Antares-67%Australia/New Zealand
Apr 13Spica-99%S. America/S. Atlantic
Apr 16Antares-88%S. Africa
May 10Spica+97%South Pacific
May 14Antares-96%S. Africa
Jun 6Spica+83%Antarctica
Jun 10Antares+99%Australia/New Zealand
Jul 3Spica+60%Antarctica
Jul 7Antares+91%S. Africa/SW Australia
Jul 26Regulus+5%Arctic1st of cycleJul 31Spica+44%Antarctica
Aug 4Antares+80%Antarctica/S. South America
Aug 23Regulus+0.5%ArcticNear NewAug 27Spica+20%Antarctica
Aug 31Antares+56%New Zealand/Antarctica
Sep 19Regulus-4%Arctic
Sep 23Spica+3%Antarctica
Sep 27Antares+28%Antarctica
Oct 16Regulus-22%NE North America
Oct 21Spica+0.5%AntarcticaNear NewOct 25Antares+15%S. South America
Nov 13Regulus-37%N. Europe
Nov 17Spica-7%AntarcticaFinal of cycleNov 21Antares+2%Southern Indian OceanDaytimeDec 10Regulus-64%N. North America
Dec 18Antares-3%Southern AtlanticDaytime Occultations of the Pleiades by the Moon in 2025

The Moon occults the Pleiades 14 times worldwide in 2025, in a series of ongoing occultations running all the way out to 2029:

DateLocation favoredMoon phaseNotesJanuary 10thNorth America/W. Europe/NW Africa+82%
February 6thWestern North America+69%
March 5thNE Asia+43%
April 1stEurope+17%
April 29thN. Pacific+4%
May 26thNorth America<1%Daytime, unobservableJune 23rdNE Africa-8%
July 20thNorth America-24%
August 16thNE Asia-45%
September 12thEurope-67%
October 10thW. North America-87%
November 6thN. Asia-98%
December 4thNW North America-99%
December 31stN. Asia+89%
Bright Comets to Watch for in 2025

Right now, there’s only one comet with real potential to reach naked eye visibility in 2025: Comet C/2024 G3 ATLAS. This comet reaches perihelion 0.094 AU from the Sun on January 13th, and ‘may’ top -1st magnitude or brighter. At magnitude +7 as of writing this in late December 2024, Comet G3 ATLAS could become a fine object low in the dawn sky for southern hemisphere observers… but only if it holds together and performs as expected.

A bright Geminid meteor over southern Arizona from 2024. Credit: Eliot Herman Meteor Showers to Watch For in 2025

Here are prospects for annual meteor showers in 2025:

Quadrantids – Peak at a Zenithal Hourly Rate (ZHR) of 80 on January 4th versus a +27% illuminated, waxing crescent Moon.

Lyrids – Peak on April 22nd with an ZHR of 18, versus a -32% illuminated, waning crescent Moon.

Eta Aquariids – Peak on May 5th with a ZHR of 50, versus a +64% illuminated, waxing gibbous Moon.

Southern Delta Aquariids – Peak on July 31st, with a ZHR of 25, versus a +44% illuminated, waxing crescent Moon.

Perseids – Peak on August 12th, with an expected ZHR of 100, versus a -87% illuminated, waning gibbous Moon.

Orionids – Peak on October 21st with an expected ZHR of 20, versus a New Moon.

Leonids – Peak on November 17th, with a ZHR of 10, versus a -5% illuminated, thin waning crescent Moon.

Geminids – Peak on December 14th, with a ZHR of 150, versus a -23% illuminated, waning crescent Moon.

Ursids – Peak on December 22nd, with a ZHR of 10, versus a 7% illuminated, waxing crescent Moon.

My money is on the Geminids for the best expected meteor shower of 2025.

Weirdness and More

Well, we’re now officially a quarter of the way into the 21st century. For fans and users of stellar cartography, 2050.0 coordinates will now slowly start to come into vogue versus 2000.0, as we inch ever closer to mid-century. It’s a strange thought, for those of us who still remember 1950.0 coordinates on star maps (and star maps in general!). Looking out of the solar system, we’re still waiting for the reclusive (and now overdue) recurrent nova T Coronae Borealis to finally pop.

Also, the white dwarf star Sirius b is now at apastron 11.5” from its brilliant primary, making this an excellent time to cross it off of your life-list… the +4 and +6 magnitude double star 70 Ophiuchus also reaches maximum separation of 6.7” in 2025. Finally, will the defunct Soviet Kosmos 482 Venus mission reenter in 2025? Should we alert the Six Million Dollar Man to stand-by to fight the ‘Venus Death Probe?’

…And a Teaser for 2026

The sky just keeps turning into 2026. Watch for mutual eclipse season for the major moons of Jupiter, as the moons pass one in front of the other. Also, the ongoing solar cycle is also still expected to be active into 2026, producing sunspots, space weather and more. And (finally!) we’ll see the return of total solar eclipses on August 12th, as the umbral shadow of the Moon crosses Greenland, Iceland and northern Spain.

Don’t miss all of these great sky-watching events and more, coming to a sky near you.

Credits: It has been a wild year, on the Earth and in the sky above. We always like to say that our sky watching almanac for the coming year is the one post that takes us six months to write, and this year’s is no exception. Lots of research goes into these, and we’ve picked the brains of lots of knowledgeable observers in the process. Thanks to John Flannery at the Irish Astronomical Society, Bob King, Robert Sparks, Andrew Symes, Paul Stewart, Eliot Herman, Guy Ottewell and everyone who contributed over the past year. Additionally, thanks go out to Universe Today Publisher Fraser Cain for hosting these looks at astronomy for the coming year, for going on over a decade now.

It’s going to be another great year for skywatching in 2025… and who knows? If the interest is out there, 2026 might see this half-a-year project grow into something bigger.

The post Top Astronomy Events for 2025 appeared first on Universe Today.

Some quantum fields that extend throughout all of space-time could be a rich resource of quantum entanglement that can be extracted forever

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For decades cosmologists have wondered if the large-scale structure of the universe is a fractal: if it looks the same no matter the scale. And the answer is: no, not really. But in some ways, yes. Look, it’s complicated.

Our universe is unimaginably vast and contains somewhere around two trillion galaxies. These galaxies aren’t scattered around randomly, but are assembled into a series of ever-larger structures. There are the groups, containing at most a dozen galaxies are so. Then there are the clusters, which are home to a thousand galaxies and more. Above them are the superclusters, which twist and wind for millions of light-years.

Is this the end of the story?

In the mid 20th century Benoit Mandelbrot brought the concept of fractals into the mainstream. Mandelbrot didn’t invent the concept of fractals – mathematicians had been studying self-similar patterns for ages – but he did coin the word and usher in our modern study of the concept. The basic idea of a fractal is that you can use a single mathematical formula to define a structure at all scales. In other words, you can zoom in and out of a fractal and it still maintains the same shape.

Fractals appear everywhere in nature, from the branches of a tree to the edges of a snowflake. And Mandelbrot himself wondered if the universe is a fractal. If as we zoom out we will see the same kinds of structures appearing again and again.

And in a way, that’s what we see: a hierarchy of structures at ever-larger scales in the universe. But that hierarchy does come to an end. At a certain scale, roughly 300 million lightyears across, the cosmos becomes homogenous, meaning that there are no larger structures and the universe is (at that scale) roughly the same from place to place.

The universe is definitely not a fractal, but parts of the cosmic web still have interesting fractal-like properties. For example, clumps of dark matter called “halos”, which host galaxies and their clusters, form nested structures and sub-structures, with halos holding sub-haloes, and sub-sub-halos inside those.

Conversely, the voids of our universe aren’t entirely empty. They do contain a few, faint dwarf galaxies…and those few galaxies are arranged in a subtle, faint version of the cosmic web. In computer simulations, the sub-voids within that structure contain their own effervescent cosmic webs too.

So while the universe as a whole isn’t a fractal, and Mandelbrot’s idea didn’t hold up, we can still find fractals almost everywhere we look.

The post Is the Universe a Fractal? appeared first on Universe Today.

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Even highly realistic androids can cause unease when their facial expressions lack emotional consistency. Traditionally, a 'patchwork method' has been used for facial movements, but it comes with practical limitations. A team developed a new technology using 'waveform movements' to create real-time, complex expressions without unnatural transitions. This system reflects internal states, enhancing emotional communication between robots and humans, potentially making androids feel more humanlike.

Researchers have developed nanodiamond sensors with nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers, offering exceptional brightness and spin properties for quantum sensing and bioimaging. These nanodiamonds outperform commercial options, requiring 20 times less energy and maintaining quantum states 11 times longer. Enhanced sensitivity to magnetic fields and temperature enables precise applications, including disease detection, battery analysis, and thermal management of electronics, marking a significant advancement in nanotechnology-driven quantum sensing for biological and industrial innovations.

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Bright, twisted light can be produced with technology similar to an Edison light bulb, researchers have shown. The finding adds nuance to fundamental physics while offering a new avenue for robotic vision systems and other applications for light that traces out a helix in space.

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A US facility will pull up to 500,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide from the air per year after it opens in 2025 and sell carbon offset credits to large companies

A map of 31 million galaxies created by the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument will be released next year, and could shed light on the origins of this mysterious force

A robotic boom could see thousands of humanoid units entering workplaces and more in 2025, but whether they will have staying power remains to be seen

From auroras to partial eclipses of the sun, Leah Crane is planning out the astronomical events she will be watching next year

In the new photographic collection Our Frozen Planet, Michael Hambrey and Jürg Alean set out to celebrate the world's ice in all its forms

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