Star Points for January, 2001; by Curtis Roelle Conjunctions of Inner Planets Heat Up Winter Sky Y2K is finally over and the world as we know it has survived. This month is the beginning of a new century as well as a new millennium. What breakthroughs await, only time will tell. Discovery came quickly in the 19th century. On the evening of January 1, 1801 - the century's very first day - a Sicilian monk by the name of Giuseppe Piazizi discovered a celestial object way out between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Named after the Roman goddess of vegetation, Ceres was the first discovered member of a class of objects now referred to as the asteroids. With the discovery of Uranus only 20 years before, Ceres was considered by some to be the eighth planet. Neptune had Pluto were still unknown at the time. While Ceres is the largest belt asteroid ever discovered its small diameter of 1025 km (637 miles) was considered by astronomers to be unworthy of inclusion in the club of major planets. To date thousands of asteroids have been discovered and more are found every year. The convention is to precede the name with a numerical number indicating the order of discovery. Hence, the first asteroid is denoted as 1 Ceres. After sunset in January the brilliant impossible to miss "star" in the western sky is actually the planet Venus. Venus reaches maximum eastern elongation on the night of Tuesday, January 16-17. In other words, Venus will be at its highest point in the evening sky. Speaking of asteroids, if you have access to a telescope or binoculars you might be able to use Venus as a guidepost to locating the asteroid 3 Juno on the evening of Sunday, January 14. Juno will be just 1.8 degrees southeast of the planet. The "pointer stars" in the bowl of the "Big Dipper" are 5 degrees apart. So the gap between Venus and Juno will be less than half of that distance. At magnitude +10 Juno is far dimmer than magnitude -4.4 Venus -- a difference of 14.4 magnitudes. Therefore, Venus is over a half million (575,439) times brighter than Juno! Mercury, the other interior planet, briefly joins Venus in the evening during January. Mercury will be easiest to view on Sunday, January 28th. Look for it low in the west-southwest around a half hour after sunset, a few minutes before 6:00 p.m. EST. If you have a clear flat horizon Mercury should be 10 degrees above the horizon. Hint: An outstretched fist is about 10 degrees wide, regardless of your age. Venus glares 36 times brighter than -0.5 magnitude Mercury. But Mercury is 524 times brighter than magnitude +6 Uranus, when the two appear separated by only 0.4 degrees -- less than the apparent diameter of the moon -- on the evening of Monday, January 22. Although it is a difficult observation to make in twilight, both objects will fit within the same low power telescopic field of view. When nautical twilight begins at 5:45 p.m. Mercury is just eight degrees above the horizon and the sun is only 17 degrees away. This is actually the first of a triple conjunction between the two planets which occurs this winter. Unfortunately, during the next conjunction on February 15 both planets will be appearing too close to the sun for practical viewing. The third Mercury-Uranus conjunction will be in the morning sky on Saturday March 10. We'll talk more about it then. The Star Points web site has a new address so be sure to book mark it at http://members.fortunecity.com/starpoints/.