Welcome to the University of Texas Skywatchers Report for Monday January 12th through Monday January 19th.

The first new moon for the new year occurs on Sunday January 18th, so we’ll have a waning crescent moon in the early morning skies all of this week.

Venus is slowly emerging from behind the sun and is still lost in the evening twilight.

Saturn is up in the southwest at sunset and is setting at 10:35 p.m. at midweek.

Jupiter is just past opposition, so it is now rising a little before sunset and is about 20 degrees above the east-northeastern horizon by 7 p.m.

In the morning skies, Mercury is moving back towards the sun and its next conjunction, and Mars is just emerging from behind the sun, so the two planets will be close to one another by the end of the week, but they won’t be visible from Earth because of their close proximity to the Sun.

This week, Austin will experience its latest sunrise for the year at 7:28 a.m., while our earliest sunset for the season occurred in early December, and the overall shortest amount of daylight was on the winter solstice on December 21st. The difference comes from a mismatch of human timekeeping systems and the actual orbital position and axial rotation of the Earth.

In space anniversaries this week, Thursday January 15th marks 20 years since the return of the Stardust capsule to Earth, carrying particles of dust sampled from the Comet Wild 2. And just a few days later on January 19th that same year, the New Horizons spacecraft launched on its mission to become the first human probe to flyby the dwarf planet Pluto. New Horizons encountered the Pluto system in July of 2015 and has continued into the Kuiper Belt where it is expected to have the power to operate into the 2030s.

Spring semester viewing on UT campus telescope will resume next week. Please check back for details on starting dates and times.

Thank you for calling the University of Texas Skywatchers Report.