Hello ...
Happy New Year! Here's your Cosmic Pursuits newsletter for January 2024!
1. The new year arrives with a promising but brief meteor shower and plenty of planets putting on a show in the morning and evening skies. Mars, Mercury, and Venus emerge before sunrise, while Saturn and Jupiter linger in the west after sunset, both planets still worthy targets for a small telescope. Here's what to see in the Night Sky This Month...
2. It's an unusually busy year for celestial events. I originally planned a short article detailing the ten best for 2024, but the list expanded - there's just too much to see this year. Here are the 23 best celestial events for 2024.
3. Sky & Telescope sums up the ten best astronomy news stories for 2023.
4. And it was a great year for discovery as the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) helped astronomers increase their understanding of the cosmos and everyone's sense of awe. Here are 12 discoveries by JWST that changed our understanding of
astronomy.
5. And a longer read with an historical bent - how the jaw-dropping Leonid meteor shower of 1833 led people to believe, quite understandably, that the world was coming to an end.
And the astronomy quote of the month...
“ To know ourselves, we must know the stars."
- James B. Kaler
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Wishing you clear skies!
Brian Ventrudo
Publisher
CosmicPursuits.com
