At least one astronomer says it’s going to be tough to beat 2024 when it comes to sky-watching. Looking Up podcast host Dean Regas says April saw one of the biggest astronomical events possible: the total solar eclipse.
“This is a life-changing moment. I mean, people that saw this were just in awe. They were yelling, hooting, hollering, crying,” he says. “I got to witness it up at the Armstrong Air and Space Museum up in Wapakoneta, Ohio, and we had 10,000 people there viewing this thing and it was just amazing.”
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Regas says that was the premier event, but it was followed by big solar storms, making another phenomenon visible as far south as Florida.
“Which is very, very rare. Both in May and October, we had pretty good showings here of the northern lights, the aurora borealis," he says. "Seeing the sky turn all those pinkish colors for that short period of time — I mean, that’s about as good as it gets: the total eclipse and the northern lights in Ohio? Hard to beat that.”
Regas says an unexpected comet, the Tsuchinshan-ATLAS comet, was briefly visible from Earth this year, and the James Webb telescope captured more spectacular images of the galaxy.
In October, NASA launched the Europa Clipper, which is headed to one of Jupiter's moons to look for water. That's not expected to arrive until 2030.
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Regas says there's more to come in the night sky in 2025.
“It’s going to be hard to top 2024 when it comes to astronomical events,” he says. “The ones that I have on my calendar: We got one that’s going to be coming up here in January, where Mars is going to be at its closest approach to us for the year. We’ll have lots of planets up in the sky, so you’ll probably see lots of things talking about the ‘planet parade’ where you can see Venus, Saturn, Jupiter and Mars in the sky, so that’ll be January.”
Regas says a total lunar eclipse will be visible over much of North America on the night of March 13, and he's eager for the Orionid meteor shower in October, with hopes it will be spectacular.
