Saying Goodbye to Atlas
By Alan Hale
As the new year of 2026 dawns, several of our bright planets are missing in action. Venus and Mars pass behind the sun, as seen from Earth, early this month and are invisible to us. Within a couple of months, both worlds will start emerging back into our skies, Venus in the evening and Mars in the morning. Mercury also passes behind the sun this month but will be visible in the west during dusk in February.
Our solar system’s two largest worlds are well placed for viewing this month. Saturn, the ringed planet—although the rings are close to being edge-on to us right now—is high up in the western sky as darkness falls. It sets during the mid- to late-evening hours. Jupiter is directly opposite the sun in the sky Saturday, Jan. 10. It shines brilliantly throughout the entire night, passing almost directly overhead during the hours around midnight.
One other world easy to find this month is the distant planet Uranus. Throughout January, the seventh planet can be spotted to the south-southwest of the Pleiades star cluster in Taurus. It is dimly visible to the unaided eye from dark rural sites and shows a small greenish disk as seen through a small telescope. It was 40 years ago this month that the Voyager 2 spacecraft passed by Uranus, giving us our only close-up view—thus far, anyway—of this distant world.
The interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS, discovered in July 2025, passed its closest to the sun in October. Although it wasn’t visible from Earth at the time, it passed close to Mars and was observed by spacecraft in Mars orbit and on its surface. Several other spacecraft in various other parts of the solar system also spotted it.
It emerged into our morning sky a month later, somewhat brighter than expected, and has been easily detectable with small backyard telescopes. This month, it travels westward through the constellation of Cancer between Leo and Gemini and is at opposition Friday, Jan. 23.
This will likely be our last good chance to spy this vagabond wanderer from the far reaches of the galaxy as it completes its passage through our solar system.