Saturn is the planet best for viewing all year. It reaches opposition in February. This summer, Jupiter reaches opposition and will be excellent to view the rest of the year. Venus also appears as the “Evening Star” this summer and can be seen high in the west. By October, Venus will become the “Morning Star” for the rest of the year. Mars is excellent to view at the end of the year. It gets bigger and brighter all year, and reaches opposition by Christmas Eve.

It’s a poor year for viewing comets. There are 29 periodic comets passing through the sky this year, but very few are visible. Comet 2P/Encke can be seen in March and April passing through the constellations Pisces (the Fishes) and Aries (the Ram), but a telescope is needed. At the end of the year, Comet 8P/Tuttle will be visible with binoculars.

The best meteor shower is the Geminids the night of December 13/14th. The viewing conditions are excellent. Look for 50 to 100 multi-colored meteors per hour. Other excellent viewing condition meteor showers include: the Draconids in early October with about 10 meteors visible per hour; the Perseids on August 12/13th with about 60 or more per hour after sunset. The showers visible under good conditions are the Lyrids on April 22nd that have very luminous trails, and the Lyrids from June 14th through the 16th with about 10 meteors visible per hour. The Leonids on November 17/18th occur under fair conditions but can have spectacular bursts of heavy showers.

Neither of this year’s two solar eclipses can be seen from Northwest Indiana. On March 19th, a partial solar eclipse will occur and can be seen from Alaska. A second partial solar eclipse occurs on September 11th and can be seen from South America, Antarctica, and the southern Atlantic Ocean. One of the two lunar eclipses can be seen from Northwest Indiana. The first lunar eclipse on March 3rd is a total eclipse. It can be seen from Asia, Africa, and Europe. The second lunar eclipse is also a total eclipse and it occurs on August 28th. It can be seen best in the Pacific Ocean and western United States. From Northwest Indiana, it can be seen in full eclipse as it sets in the west. There is a blue moon (2nd full moon in one month) on May 31st.

Many launches are scheduled for this year by NASA and by many other countries. Five space shuttle launches are scheduled: Atlantis on March 16th, Endeavour on June 28th, Atlantis on September 7th, Discovery on October 17th, and Endeavour on December 8th. All missions are for the continued building of the International Space Station. In June, the ESA (European Space Agency) will use the first of their new line of automated transfer vehicles named Jules Verne to send supplies to the space station. Russian Soyuz spacecraft will go to the space station in January, March, May, and September.

Many satellites owned by many different countries will be put in orbit this year. Scientific satellites include: Japanese radar-spy; Malaysian Earth-imaging; Canada’s Radarsat 2 Earth observations; UAE (United Arab Emirates) telecommunications; U.S. AIM (Aeronomy of Ice in the Mesosphere); U.S. Gamma-Ray Telescope ; U.S. Atlas 5 rocket releasing 6 satellites for the Air Force Space Test Program-1, including the Orbital Express, ASTRO, MidSTAR 1, FalconSat 3, STPSat 1, and CFESat; U.S. Delta 2 rocket launching THEMIS (Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms), which is a system designed to study Earth’s magnetosphere.

The U.S. DAWN spacecraft is scheduled for a June 20th launch. It will go to the asteroid belt to study it. Also launched this year will be the Mars Lander Phoenix and Technical Research Minataur. For a complete international launch schedule, go to www.spaceflightnow.com.