Are you getting used to having more information available to you each year? In astronomy alone, tens of thousands of papers were published in 2023, so we depend on our collective filters to keep things manageable. Here, I present my own woefully incomplete selection along with a few anniversaries and a thought or two about everything in general.
The most important story of 2023 is that it is now the warmest year on record for our planet. A recent report by the World Meteorological Organization tells us that the global average was about 1.40°Celsius (2.52°Fahrenheit) above the pre-industrial 1850-1900 baseline. Many expect 2024 to be even warmer due to the delayed effects of last year’s El Niño event on global temperatures.
Compared to global averages, local temperatures can shift dramatically. My hiking friends and I saw one of the warmest Februarys in memory after our coldest day of snowshoeing ever on Feb. 3 — minus 15° Fahrenheit in the Adirondack Mountains of New York. (See my column about that here: https://www.masslive.com/living/2023/03/skywatch-marching-toward-spring.html).
We’ve yet to see anything like that this winter, but you may still be surprised to learn that we were closest to the sun for the year on January 2. Obviously, winter doesn’t have to do our distance from the sun. Our closest point, called perihelion, came at 7:38 p.m. when Earth was 91,404,095 miles from the sun. Earth’s farthest point, aphelion, comes on July 5 when we are 94,510,539 miles from the sun.
These distances typically vary year to year by a few thousand miles, so they are commonly rounded to 91.4 million miles, and 94.5 million miles respectively.
Our latest sunrise came on Friday morning, Jan. 5. Were it not for a little wobble in Earth’s rotation, this would occur on the shortest day — the winter solstice — along with our latest sunset. Our distance from the sun matters little here.
Speak of the sun, parts of the western U.S. Central and South America witnessed an annular eclipse in October. Annular eclipses happen when the moon is at a distant part of its orbit, and appears too small to completely cover the sun.
On April 8, the moon will completely cover the sun for a total solar eclipse visible along a line from Mexico and Texas, up through the Midwest to upstate New York, then across northern New England into Canada. This puts totality within driving distance for us here in western Massachusetts — our best chance in years to see one of the most spectacular events nature has to offer. There’s still time to plan a trip, but beware that few camping and hotel options may be left.
If you need more incentive, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is predicting that Solar Maximum will come sometime between now and October 2024, which means the sun’s corona during totality could be especially spectacular.
In November, scientists from George Mason University warned that even if this solar peak is relatively weak, sunspots and solar flares could disrupt earth-bound technologies, including the internet — a concern given that the internet grew into a global economic driver while the sun was relatively quiet.
Increased solar activity and geomagnetic storms can also disrupt satellites, and in extreme cases, our electric systems, so understanding space weather is more important than ever. I’ll let others worry about disruptions to civilization, but will keep an internet eye on solar activity so I don’t miss the next big display of the aurora borealis, or northern lights.
Clouds ruined the few chances we’ve had here in southern New England since last spring’s display. (See my column about that here: https://www.masslive.com/living/2023/04/skywatch-look-up-you-might-see-a-light-show.html)
Dec. 17 was the 120th anniversary of the Wright brothers’ first successful flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina in 1903. That seems like a long time ago, but I was born less than 50 years later, and went on to witness the first ever artificial satellite, the Soviet Union’s Sputnik in 1957.
Sputnik’s success prompted the U.S. to form the National Aeronautics and Space Administration on July 29, 1958. We celebrated NASA’s 65th anniversary in 2023.
The 20th anniversary of the Columbia Space Shuttle disaster of 2003 reminded us of the risks of space travel, while the International Space Station — the largest artificial satellite ever — marked its 25th year in orbit.
Over 270 people from 21 countries have flown on the ISS, including those on private missions like Axiom 2 in 2023. Every person there needs about a gallon of water per day for drinking, food preparation, and hygiene, so it was an important milestone in 2023 when the station achieved a water recovery rate of 98% — mainly by recycling urine.
Among those who will benefit from this technology is NASA’s Artemis moon program, which probably won’t launch its first manned mission until at least 2025. NASA has modified its contract with SpaceX to further develop the Starship human landing system for the Artemis program despite two partially successful Starship launches in 2023.
SpaceX has landed Falcon 9 boosters at least 259 times, and in December, one booster made a record 19th landing before toppling over on its barge in rough seas.
Russia, India, and a private Japanese company attempted to land unmanned probes on the moon in 2023, but only India prevailed. A couple of U.S. companies, China, and the Japanese Space Agency will make attempts this year.
In February, NASA’s Mars Perseverance Rover will begin its fourth Earth-year on the Red Planet. Incredibly, the Ingenuity helicopter it carried — the first craft to fly on another world — has made at least 69 flights since its first in April 2022.Our other rover, Curiosity, entered its 13th active year on Mars in November.
In October, NASA’s Juno probe — which entered Jupiter orbit in 2016 — flew just 7,270 miles from Jupiter’s moon Io, revealing never before seen surface details.
In April, the European Space Agency launched the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) to determine the past — or present — habitability of those moons. It will arrive at Jupiter in 2031.
In September, NASA retrieved its first sample of asteroid Bennu from the OSIRIS-REx probe, and in October launched another spacecraft to a metal-rich asteroid named Psyche. In December, the Psyche spacecraft beamed a prerecorded video of a cat named Taters back to Earth from 19 million miles away in a test of high-bandwidth laser communications.
The James Webb Space Telescope topped off its first year with extraordinary images of the closest star-forming region to Earth and the Crab Nebula after challenging cosmologists with surprising observations of the most distant galaxies ever seen. Meanwhile, the Hubble Space Telescope hobbles along 30 years after its vision was restored by high-flying space shuttle astronauts.
In July, ESA launched the wide-angle Euclid space telescope to help unlock the mysteries of dark matter and dark energy.
Around the same time, military veterans testified to Congress about unidentified flying objects, including fantastic reports of retrieved alien craft and bodies. This came just as humans were facing the real prospect of creating their own aliens in the form of artificial intelligence.
Taken together, this is a remarkable journey for a species that, for most of its existence, roamed the planet in small groups, hunting and gathering to survive.
Find rise and set times for the sun and moon, and follow ever-changing celestial highlights in the Skywatch section of the Weather Almanac in The Republican and Sunday Republican.
Patrick Rowan has written Skywatch for The Republican since 1987 and has been a Weather Almanac contributor since the mid 1990s. A native of Long Island, Rowan graduated from Northampton High School, studied astronomy at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst in the 1970s and was a research assistant for the Five College Radio Astronomy Observatory. From 1981 to 1994, Rowan worked at the Springfield Science Museum’s Seymour Planetarium, most of that time as planetarium manager. Rowan lives in the Florence section of Northampton with his wife, Clara, and their cats, Eli and Milo.
