There was a lot to see in the night skies above Wyoming in 2024, and there will be plenty more to see in 2025.
Planetary conjunctions, meteor showers and a total lunar eclipse are expected to happen over the next 12 months. Meanwhile, new milestones will be reached in several space missions exploring our solar system and beyond.
Wyoming will have a front-row seat for many of these celestial sights, so mark your calendars.
“Astronomical events are always a pleasure to see from Wyoming,” said Max Gilbraith, planetarium coordinator for the University of Wyoming. “We have some of the lowest light pollution in the continental U.S. and very statistically clear weather. It makes for great observing.”
Opposition And Conjunction
The year will start strong with a series of planetary events in January. On Jan. 16, Mars will reach opposition, one of the best times to see the Red Planet.
“Opposition is when Mars is directly opposite of the sun, which means it’s also the closest it’ll be to Earth,” Gilbraith said. “We’ll get the brightest and clearest view of Mars on the evening of the 16th.”
The extra brightness will make it easier for astronomers of all stripes to see Mars. Even binoculars will be enough to get a good glimpse.
The next night, there will be a conjunction of Venus and Saturn. The two planets will be close enough (from our perspective) that they’ll appear to pass over each other as they move across the night sky.
“Saturn and Venus will be very close to each other on Jan. 17 and 18,” Gilbraith said. “They appear as a single bright spot in the sky.”
Saturn will reach opposition Sept. 2, offering an excellent view of its rings and dozens of moons. Astronomers will get the best views with their larger and more advanced telescopes, but Gilbraith thinks it’s worth stepping out that night to find the ringed gas giant.
“Getting even a little bit closer gets you such a wonderful view,” he said.
Blood Moon 2025
Thursday, March 13, will be one of the best nights of the year in Wyoming. The state will be in the pathway of a total lunar eclipse.
Also called a blood moon, a total lunar eclipse happens when the moon moves through the Earth's shadow, covering its surface with dark red light. The blood moon will be visible between that Thursday night and Friday morning.
This is one of the events Gilbraith is most excited to see.
“We'll get the entire eclipse in Wyoming, so hope for clear skies that night,” he said. “That one’s really exciting.”
Meatier Showers
Many meteor showers seen from Earth occur around the same time every year. While they’ll all be visible from Wyoming, the best shower of 2025 will actually be closer to 2026, but worth the wait.
There is good and bad news about the peak of the Perseids in mid-August. While the Aug. 12 peak will coincide with another planetary conjunction of Venus and Jupiter, Gilbraith said there will also be a full moon that night.
“It won’t be our best Perseids year, but at least we'll get a conjunction as a consolation,” he said.
The best meteor shower of 2025 will probably be the Geminids in December. While the Perseids will be competing with a full moon, the peak of the Geminids on Dec. 14 coincides with a new moon, the ideal circumstances for a night of stargazing.
Several other meteor showers will be visible throughout the year, but Gilbraith believes Wyomingites should make a point to get outside for the Geminids. If there’s any shower worth seeing in 2025, that’s the one.
“We could see up to 120 meteors per hour on Dec. 14,” he said. “We missed out on the Geminids in 2024 because of the full moon, but that won’t happen in 2025.”
Mission Space
There are dozens of probes and satellites hurtling across the solar system on their way to distant planets with advanced equipment. Many milestones will be reached in 2025 that will undoubtedly pop up on Facebook and Instagram feeds.
Gilbraith highlighted several “deep space rendezvous” to look for this year. The first one should occur about Wednesday, when the European Space Agency’s BepiColumbo will embark on its sixth flyby of the planet Mercury.
BepiColumbo will eventually insert itself into Mercury’s orbit, but that won’t happen until November 2026. Until then, the next flyby should provide some excellent images of the closest planet to the sun.
On March 1, NASA’s Europa Clipper mission will receive a gravity assist from Mars as it continues its trajectory to one of Jupiter's largest moons, Europa. The probe will snag a few snapshots of Mars before heading toward icy Europa, which it is expected to reach by April 2030.
Hera, another mission launched by the European Space Agency, will also get a gravity boost from Mars in March. It will pass close to Deimos, the smaller of the Red Planet’s two moons, and get some photographs as it flies by.
“Hopefully, we’ll get some cool pictures of Mars and its moons when Europa Clipper and Hera pass by,” Gilbraith said.
It’ll be a big year for the European Space Agency. The Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, or Juice mission, will get a flyby assist from Venus in late August, which will help it reach Jupiter’s moons Ganymede, Callisto and Europa by July 2031.
Juice is the first interplanetary spacecraft to reach the Solar System's outer planets, which the United States hasn’t launched. Before the mission hurtles toward the moons of Jupiter, Gilbraith is hoping for some glamour shots of Venus.
“We haven't been back to Venus since the Magellan spacecraft in the early 1990s,” he said. “Juice is equipped to take nice planetary pictures, so it'll be cool to get some up-close shots from Venus before it heads toward Jupiter.”
Several Steps For Mankind
As probes head toward distant planets, space-minded agencies on Earth will continue advancing manned space flight in 2025.
NASA will send a new crew to the International Space Station in March. Meanwhile, Sierra Space and SpaceX plan to launch their respective “spaceplanes,” Dream Chaser and Starliner, before the end of the year.
One of the most anticipated manned space missions has been delayed. NASA’s Artemis II mission, the first human-crewed mission to fly around the moon since the Apollo program, was scheduled to launch in 2025 but has been delayed until April 2026.
Ongoing work on the Artemis II program will lay the groundwork for Artemis III, a crewed lunar landing scheduled for 2027 and the first since Apollo 17 in 1972. If everything continues operating on schedule, man will be back on the moon – and have set up a permanent lunar base to facilitate future Mars missions – before the end of the decade.
What Wyomingites Want
There’s a lot to look out for and up to in 2025. Gilbraith said he’s most excited about the total lunar eclipse on March 13 and the new moon peak of the Geminids on Dec. 14.
A good place to see everything there is to see in 2025 is Sink Canyon State Park in Lander. It became Wyoming’s first Dark Sky Park in 2023, ensuring there will always be a dark sky for stargazing.
Adding to Gilbraith’s excitement is the newly opened Snow King Observatory and Planetarium in Jackson, which will be doing competitive research projects in the coming year. Along with the Wyoming Infrared Observatory in Laramie, there’s an exciting new space race in the Cowboy State.
“I’ll be staying out late a lot this year,” he said.
Andrew Rossi can be reached at arossi@cowboystatedaily.com.
