Adrian Dening's Stars Over Somerset

Wednesday, 21 January 2026 21:42

Monday 26th January to Sunday 1st February 2026

If you look towards the south west at 9pm on the evening of Tuesday 27th, a 68%-lit waxing gibbous Moon will appear to be passing in front of the Pleiades open cluster of stars. To the left of this event, the constellation of Orion with its bright stars Betelgeuse and Rigel will be easy to spot.

While you are looking in that direction, you can observe several more of the brightest stars in the night sky - Sirius, which is the brightest of all, Procyon and Capella. Even brighter, between Procyon and Capella, you will find Jupiter.

The enormous gas giant planets of our Solar System always look much brighter than the background stars, because they are relatively close to us and you see them because sunlight is reflecting off their surface. Stars are giving off their own light and that light is travelling much further to reach us. This is also why planets never seem to "twinkle" because the light is so much brighter, but the weaker light from stars is more-noticeably distorted as it travels through our atmosphere.

If you repeat your observations at 9pm on Saturday 31st, looking towards the south, you will notice a 95%-lit waxing gibbous Moon very close to Jupiter. The Moon appears to move differently to everything else in the night sky because it is orbiting around the Earth every month and we see different phases of it illuminated as, while it is going around us, we are both travelling around the Sun together and we rotate on our axis every twenty four hours.

Planets like Venus, that are closer to the Sun than us exhibit phases too, but the outer planets like Jupiter will always appear as pinpoints of light.

www.starsoversomerset.com

Screenshots courtesy of Stellarium