What to look out for in the 2025 skies

2025 is set to be a fantastic year for astronomy, from 4 lunar and solar eclipses, Saturn ‘losing’ its rings and the Moon coming closer to Earth than at any time since February 2019! 

Catch Venus next to the crescent moon

Throughout the first few months of the year, it will be possible to see the phases of Venus change from half-lit (at its dichotomy) on 11 January to an increasingly small crescent by using a small telescope and looking in the sunset direction. After its brightest point (greatest brilliance) on 16 February, reaching a magnitude of -4.8 (how bright it is) Venus will not reach this magnitude again until September 2026, Venus will rapidly sink into the sun’s glare and pass between the Earth and Sun through what is known as the ‘Inferior Conjunction’ on March 16. Then, during April it will rise as a ‘Morning Star’ before sunrise in April and quickly peak in brightness. During its evening apparitions, the planet will also be joined by a crescent moon after sunset on the 3 January, 1 February and 1 March. This will also happen before sunrise on 22 June, 21 and 22 July and 20 August alongside Jupiter. A 6%-lit crescent moon will also pass very close to Venus and Regulus on 19 September.

Earth and Venus orbit the sun counterclockwise as seen from the north side of the solar system. Venus reaches its greatest eastern elongation in the evening sky about 72 days before the inferior conjunction and its greatest western elongation in the morning sky about 72 days after the inferior conjunction. The greatest illuminated extent for Venus comes midway between a greatest elongation and an inferior conjunction.

Greatest brilliancy occurs when the illumination is at the ‘Greatest illuminated extent’ which is always about a month before and after the inferior conjunction and it comes close enough to it to exhibit its brightness and its daytime side covers the greatest area of sky. This only happens when Venus is a crescent. 

The disk size of Venus will also be large and will be a 40-arcsecond crescent disk on February 16. Disk size increases after a superior conjunction -when Venus goes behind the sun- which occurred on June 4 2024, with Venus approximately a 10-arcsecond disk in July afterwards. 

Venus beginning to pass behind the sun on June 3. SOHO’s LASCO C2 captured Venus to pass behind the sun (or, in this case, behind the spacecraft imagery equipment’s sun-occulter). The occultation of Venus behind the sun – the “anti-transit” – started around 14:00 UTC on June 3 as seen by SOHO’s LASCO 2 imager. Venus takes many hours to go to its deepest point behind the sun. It’ll be most deeply behind the sun today, June 4. Meanwhile, the Venus Superior Conjunction – when it and the sun have the same “right ascension” – that is, the same east-west coordinate on the sky’s dome as viewed by us on Earth – happened at around 16:00 UTC on June 4. Image via SOHO.

Mars enjoys an extra bright opposition

Since October, Mars has been getting redder and brighter, this is part of a run-up to a once-every-26-months opposition happening on 16 January. This opposition will see the entire disc lit up as the Sun, Earth and red planet line up. The planet will be visible with the naked eye as it rises in the east during sunset and during the majority of the night. 

February Planetary Parade

Whilst there is no leap year this year, on February 28 there will be a great evening alignment of Saturn, Mercury, Neptune, Venus, Uranus, Jupiter, and Mars. Uranus And Neptune will not be visible by eye but by using a small telescope you should be able to see them. Despite the name of this event, the planets are not actually aligned as in the actual, three-dimensional solar system, they aren’t really lined up. Besides, since all eight planets don’t orbit on exactly the same plane—some orbits are a little bit tilted in relation to each other—the solar system can’t truly align in full. But when the planets do sync up in their orbits, it’s known as a syzygy—and that kind of event is extremely rare, only happening a few times in a millennia. It is important to note that Saturn, Mercury, and Neptune will be close to the sun at sunset and will not be the best places to view them, after the sunsets there may be an opportunity to see them at the horizon, if you are at a high, flat place but by 23:00 they will be below the horizon. A slightly smaller alignment of six planets will begin on January 21, featuring Mars, Jupiter, Uranus, Neptune, Saturn and Venus and will have a window of ideal visibility through February 21. The last time all the planets lined up this way was on April 8, 2024—making the planetary alignment visible during the total solar eclipse over North America.

Saturn loses her rings

If you have been observing Saturn over the last few years, you may have noticed that the iconic bands of ice and dust around the gas giant have been getting less visible, this phenomenon happens because the planet rotates on an axis tilted by 26.7 degrees, and the view of its rings from Earth changes with time. As the planet's axis tilts, the very thin rings (usually with an average width of 10-20m) will slenderly align, edge-on to our viewpoint (Like if you were to view a piece of paper edge-on), hiding them from our sight, this is called a Ring Plane Crossing.

This is part of the planet’s 29.5-year orbit around the sun which means we see the rings at a different angle and the rings will become visible again in 2032 when we see Saturn’s south pole directly looking on to Earth. The date of the ring plane crossing is March 23, 2025. Unfortunately, Saturn is in conjunction with the sun on March 12 meaning Saturn will be passing behind the sun from our perspective. So even though the rings are unlit for 44 days, these days are all around the time that Saturn will appear close to the sun, making it too bright for us to easily view. Between February and May, Saturn is also not in a good position to observe. However, the rings go back to being nearly edge-on in November. On November 23, 2025, the rings will be at their narrowest from our point of view. ''Every 13 to 15 years, Earth sees Saturn's rings edge-on, meaning they reflect very little light and are very difficult to see, making them essentially invisible,", Vahe Peroomian, professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Southern California, told CBS News. The last time the rings last went edge-on was in 2009 and they will be precisely edge-on on March 23, 2025, he said. With the rings not visible, it offers a great opportunity to see her moons.

The Moon comes closer to Earth than it has in 6 Years!

In 2025 there will be 3 supermoons in the latter half of the year on October 8, November 5 and December 4. Although all promise spectacular viewing, the November 5 supermoon will be the closest lunar encounter since 2019!

A quartet of eclipses

There will be two lunar eclipses in 2025, this is when the Moon moves into the Earth's shadow, causing the Moon to be darkened. A total lunar eclipse occurs when the Moon's near side entirely passes into the Earth's umbral shadow. The first is a total lunar eclipse on March 14 which will occur at the Moon’s descending node of orbit (southern point of contact with the elliptical) with an umbral magnitude of 1.1804, and the second is a total lunar eclipse on September 7 at the ascending node of orbit with an umbral magnitude of 1.3638. 

The March 14 eclipse will be completely visible over North and South America, seen rising over Australia and northeast Asia and setting over Africa and Europe. Whilst the September 7 eclipse eclipse will be completely visible over east Africa, Asia, and Australia, seen rising over most of Africa and Europe and setting over the central Pacific Ocean.

March 14 Figures:

September 7 Figures:

These eclipses are part of their respective eclipse seasons, a period, roughly every six months when eclipses occur. Only two (or occasionally three) eclipse seasons occur each year, and each season lasts about 35 days and repeats just short of six months (173 days) later; thus two full eclipse seasons always occur each year. Either two or three eclipses happen each eclipse season. In both seasons, the lunar eclipses are followed by a partial solar eclipse.

The two partial solar eclipses are on March 29 (visible in parts of the northeastern United States, eastern Canada, Greenland, Europe, Northwest Africa, and northwestern Russia) and September 21 (which will be visible across much of Oceania and Antarctica, with up to 73% coverage being visible in mainland New Zealand). 

March 29 Info:

September 21 Info:

Thank you so much for reading! If you have any questions comment below and I can answer them or if there is anything you would like covered in a further issue or need explained further leave a comment or tag @EveCarruthers_ on X.