January 2026 Stargazing Guide
Here we go. Greetings, junior scientists, scientists and citizens of this great big weird, wild, and wonderful world in which we live. As always, I'm your humble science communicator, the Great Orbax, coming to you from the Department of Physics at the University of Guelph and I'd like to welcome you to our January 2026 Star Gazing Guide.
Boom.
Welcome in to a brand new year.
The weather is cold and the skies are crisp and while I know it may not seem like it, now that we've passed the winter solstice our days are actually getting longer.
With sunrise moving up from 7:54 a.m. on the 1st to 7:38 a.m. on the 31st,
and sunset gets pushed back from 4:55 p.m. at the beginning of the month to 5:31 p.m. by the end.
So, what joys do our January night skies hold?
This month we gaze upon, yup, that's right, yet another super moon.
Are baffled by a dazzling display from Jupiter,
and are on the hunt for some fireballs.
All this and more when we just take some time...
to look up.
Our Full Moon this month,
oh, wait, that's later.
Our New Moon this month takes place on January 18th, meaning that our skies will be as dark as they get in the few days before and after.
So, what's a good winter constellation that you should be looking for?
One of the most iconic and easy to spot constellations this time of year is Orion.
Rising in the East and laying low in the sky until morning, the telltale asterism of Orion's belt should be easy to spot.
This is composed of the three stars, Alnitak, Alnilam and Mintaka.
If you look to the middle of Orion's sword on dark nights like this,
you may be able to spot the Orion Nebula,
M42 with the unaided eye.
Now, this will look like a fuzzy white smudge, but with binoculars or a home telescope, the view will be more refined and you might be able to pick out some individual stars and nuances.
So, what's a nebula?
A nebula is a cloud of dust and gas in space.
Some are formed when stars explode, while others, like the Orion Nebula, are actually stellar nurseries, regions of space where new stars are born.
As a matter of fact, astronomers have discovered around 700 stars in different stages of formation within the Orion Nebula.
Well worth a look on the darkest nights of January.
Our planets this month are our faithful gas giants, Jupiter and Saturn.
Saturn will be visible in the southwest at sunset, disappearing behind the horizon well before midnight with that getting earlier as the month goes on.
Jupiter will already be up at sunset in the east and visible all night long.
On January 10th, Jupiter will be undergoing opposition, which simply means that the Earth will lie directly between Jupiter and the Sun.
This means that Jupiter will be the brightest and closest to us that it gets all year. It also means that with a home telescope or a pair of binoculars, you might be able to spot the four biggest moons of Jupiter.
These are called the Galilean moons,
named for Galileo,
who discovered them on January 7th, 1610,
almost exactly 416 years ago.
Our Full Moon this month is on January 3rd.
It will actually occur very close to perigee, the point in the Moon's orbit where it's closest to Earth.
So, we know what that means.
It's a supermoon to start off 2026.
Settlers called the January Full Moon the Wolf Moon named for the hungry call the wolves they heard this time of year. Since right now the north pole is tilted away from the Sun, during these short days the Sun appears to remain low in our skies while our January Moon remains very high.
The Ojibwe of the great lakes region referred to the January full moon as Gichi-manidoo Giizis, the “Great Spirit Moon”. The Cree speak of the trees cracking under extreme cold by calling this the "Frost Exploding Moon" while The Mi'kmaw call the Jan 3 full Moon Kjiku's the "Chief Moon", as the closest full moon to the winter solstice.
The Quadrantids take place from December 26th to January 16th and peak on the night of January 3rd into the morning of the 4th. Now, while most meteor showers peak over the course of a couple days, the Quadrantids are unique in that their peak only lasts for a few hours. During this short window, you might be able to see anywhere from 60 to 200 meteors per hour in ideal conditions. For us, in this part of Canada with the light pollution that we get and the light from the supermoon that night, we're looking at more like 10 meteors per hour at maximum.
But there is hope.
The Quadrantids are known for their fireballs. Fireballs are meteors that are much brighter, about as bright as Venus appears in the night sky, and tend to persist longer than typical shooting stars.
This is caused by larger chunks of debris burning up in the atmosphere, and potentially makes for an incredible display of fireworks.
The Quadrantids are named for the radiant, a constellation that we no longer recognize called Quadrans Muralis, an area just below the handle of the Big Dipper in the northeast.
But meteors should be visible anywhere in the night sky.
Good luck, junior scientists.
Well, there you have it.
There certainly is a lot to look forward to in this new year that we've embarked upon.
And while the year ahead may bring some surprises, I hope it includes at least a few clear skies and of course taking some time to look up.
See you next month, junior scientists, and don't forget to have a science-tastic day.
Special thanks to Royal City Science's own planetary geochemist, Dr. Glynis Perrett for her help in preparing our stargazing guide
and the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada.