2024 Cosmic Wonders: Unveiling the Moon and Sun’s Spectacular New Year Performances

From Cape Canaveral, Florida, the spotlight will be on the moon as it heralds the start of the year’s astronomical highlights. Not only are astronauts making a long-awaited return, but a fleet of robotic lunar landers, including Jeff Bezos’ impressive new Blue Moon, will also make their mark. The year kicks off with a supermoon on January 3, and an astronomical blue moon is slated for May.

The sun won’t be left out, delivering awe-inspiring spectacles with a ring-of-fire eclipse in the southern hemisphere in February, followed by a total solar eclipse in the northern hemisphere come August. These events are expected to spark increased sightings of auroras, albeit possibly less frequently than in recent years.

Meanwhile, a recently discovered interstellar comet, 3I/Atlas, which made headlines as it passed close to Earth in December, is gradually fading from view. While still detectable with powerful backyard telescopes, its journey continues toward Jupiter in March. Once it exits our solar system around ten years from now, it will resume its voyage through interstellar space.

This comet marks the third known interstellar visitor, with scientists eagerly awaiting the discovery of more such cosmic travelers.

It’s our third known interstellar visitor. Scientists anticipate more.

“I can’t believe it’s taken this long to find three,” said NASA’s Paul Chodas, who’s been on the lookout since the 1980s. And with ever better technology, “the chance of catching another interstellar visitor will increase.”

Here’s a rundown on what the universe has in store for us in 2026:

NASA’s upcoming moonshot commander Reid Wiseman said there’s a good chance he and his crew will be the first to lay eyeballs on large swaths of the lunar far side that were missed by the Apollo astronauts a half-century ago. Their observations could be a boon for geologists, he noted, and other experts picking future landing sites.

Launching early in the year, the three Americans and one Canadian will zip past the moon, do a U-turn behind it, then hustle straight back to Earth to close out their 10-day mission. No stopping for a moonwalk — the boot prints will be left by the next crew in NASA’s Artemis lunar exploration program.

More robotic moon landings are on the books by China as well as U.S. companies. Early in the year, Amazon founder Bezos is looking for his Blue Origin rocket company to launch a prototype of the lunar lander it’s designing for NASA’s astronauts. This Blue Moon demo will stand 26 feet (8 meters), taller than what delivered Apollo’s 12 moonwalkers to the lunar surface. The Blue Moon version for crew will be almost double that height.

Back for another stab at the moon, Astrobotic Technology and Intuitive Machines are also targeting 2026 landings with scientific gear. The only private entity to nail a lunar landing, Firefly Aerospace, will aim for the moon’s far side in 2026.

China is targeting the south polar region in the new year, sending a rover as well as a so-called hopper to jump into permanently shadowed craters in search of ice.

The cosmos pulls out all the stops with a total solar eclipse on Aug. 12 that will begin in the Arctic and cross over Greenland, Iceland and Spain. Totality will last two minutes and 18 seconds as the moon moves directly between Earth and the sun to blot out the latter. By contrast, the total solar eclipse in 2027 will offer a whopping 6 1/2 minutes of totality and pass over more countries.

For 2026, the warm-up act will be a ring-of-fire eclipse in the Antarctic on Feb. 17, with only a few research stations in prime viewing position. South Africa and southernmost Chile and Argentina will have partial viewing. A total lunar eclipse will follow two weeks after February’s ring of fire, with a partial lunar eclipse closing out the action at the end of August.

Six of the solar system’s eight planets will prance across the sky in a must-see lineup around Feb. 28. A nearly full moon is even getting into the act, appearing alongside Jupiter. Uranus and Neptune will require binoculars or telescopes. But Mercury, Venus, Jupiter and Saturn should be visible with the naked eye shortly after sunset, weather permitting, though Mercury and Venus will be low on the horizon.

Mars will be the lone no-show. The good news is that the red planet will join a six-planet parade in August, with Venus the holdout.

Three supermoons will lighten up the night skies in 2026, the stunning result when a full moon inches closer to Earth than usual as it orbits in a not-quite-perfect circle. Appearing bigger and brighter, supermoons are a perennial crowd pleaser requiring no equipment, only your eyes.

The year’s first supermoon in January coincides with a meteor shower, but the moonlight likely will obscure the dimmer fireballs. The second supermoon of 2026 won’t occur until Nov. 24, with the third — the year’s final and closest supermoon — occurring the night of Dec. 23 into Dec. 24. This Christmas Eve supermoon will pass within 221,668 miles (356,740 kilometers) of Earth.

The sun is expected to churn out more eruptions in 2026 that could lead to geomagnetic storms here on Earth, giving rise to stunning aurora. Solar action should start to ease, however, with the 11-year solar cycle finally on the downslide.

Space weather forecasters like Rob Steenburgh at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration can’t wait to tap into all the solar wind measurements coming soon from an observatory launched in the fall.

“2026 will be an exciting year for space weather enthusiasts,” he said in an email, with this new spacecraft and others helping scientists “better understand our nearest star and forecast its impacts.”

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