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By Mike Vergara, (951) 461-2889 Happy New Year! It is my fervent hope that we will put 2020 solidly in our collective rear-view mirror this year. I really miss doing the presentations at the Palomar College Planetarium and hope we can get them going again. As full moons go, this year will have the normal twelve. This means there won't be two full moons in any single month. Starting the year is the "Full Wolf Moon" on January 28. January's full moon is also known as the "Old Moon", or the "Moon After Yule", since it's the first full moon after Christmas. There will be two lunar eclipses this year, the first in May and the second in November. The orbits of the planets (and moons, and comets, and pretty much everything in the solar system) around the sun are not circular, they are elliptical, which means they are oval. Each planet's orbit is different, and Earth is no exception. On January 2, the Earth will be in the position known as "perihelion", which is the point where the Earth is closest to the sun. Be sure to wear additional sunscreen if you go to the beach! Mercury is usually a hard planet to spot since it is so close to the sun. On January 25, Mercury will be at its highest point in the evening sky. It will be about 16½ degrees above the horizon. This event, known as "greatest elongation", happens several times each year for Mercury. A full orbit of the sun, a Mercurian "year", is 88 Earth-days. The International Space Station will be passing overhead in the early mornings for the first part of January; these passes will range from 4:36am to 6:12am at their highest point. Later in the month it switches to the evening, ranging from 6:04pm to 7:38pm. It saddens me to report the loss of an important and historical observatory. In early December, cables supporting the instrument platform at the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico failed and collapsed. The platform landed on the dish surface and destroyed a large section of it. There is no word yet if the observatory will be rebuilt. Visit http://skymaps.com/index.html to print your own map of the sky for the month. Clear skies! january Sky january Sky 18 | THE COLONY NEWS | JANUARY 2021 | COMMUNITY BULLETIN BOARD