There is something exciting happening in the sky almost every night of the year if you know when and where to look. To help you out, I have sifted through all of the predictable celestial events for 2024 and selected the 10 that I am most excited about, including a spectacular total eclipse of the sun across the U.S.A., a shower of meteors, a new comet and several alignments of the major planets.

These are my top ten celestial events for 2024, presented in chronological order. I used Starry Night Pro Plus 8 software to help select and describe my top 10 events. However, not all celestial events are predictable months in advance. There’s always a chance that an unexpected new comet or a nearby supernova explosion could upstage any or all of my chosen events — and that would be okay with me.

While no optical aid is required to view and enjoy these events, a pair of ordinary binoculars or a small telescope will almost always enhance the view.

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For updates on these and other celestial events, keep an eye on the “Celestial News” column in the Steamboat Pilot & Today and also the NASA-sponsored websites Apod.nasa.gov and SpaceWeather.com.

Most of all, have fun this year sharing the wonders of our universe with your family and friends.

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A chance for the aurora borealis in Colorado all year long

The sun is a magnetic dynamo that erupts with powerful magnetic energy every 11 years and then settles down for a while until the next eruption 11 years later. We are currently in Solar Cycle 25, the 25th 11-year cycle since careful records of sunspots began in 1755.

Solar astronomers are not all that good yet at predicting the sun’s magnetic behavior from one cycle to the next, but they are getting better. The latest update from the Space Weather Forecasting Center (Oct 2023) now predicts that Solar Cycle 25 will reach its maximum of solar magnetic activity sometime in 2024, most likely between January and October.

What this means for us is that the number and severity of solar flares and coronal mass ejections, or CMEs, will reach a peak in the coming year. CMEs are one of the major sources of charged particles from the sun that can trigger vivid displays of the Northern Lights, or aurora borealis, here on earth.

This is especially true in the weeks centered around the March and September equinoxes. One large CME can flood the Earth’s magnetic field with charged particles and send the aurora borealis all the way down into the skies of Colorado.

Auroras tend to happen around local midnight when most folks are in bed and are oblivious to the marvels over their heads. To maximize your chances of seeing these dancing, colored lights, keep an eye on the NASA-sponsored website SpaceWeather.com for aurora alerts and warnings.

The crescent moon meets Pleiades on March 14

The moon and planets don’t wander aimlessly around the sky but confine their motions along a narrow path called the ecliptic that passes through the 12 constellations of the zodiac. Along this celestial highway, we find several bright stars and even a few star clusters, most notably the Pleiades or Seven Sisters star cluster.

The moon passes by the Pleiades once each month, but it isn’t always a pairing that is possible or easy to see. That’s why the close conjunction of the crescent moon and the Pleiades star cluster on March 14 makes my top 10 list this year.

Start looking in the western sky just as darkness falls. The 4-day-old crescent moon will appear just below the little-dipper-shaped Pleiades cluster. Although no optical aid is required to see both moon and cluster, a pair of ordinary binoculars will greatly enhance the view. Look also for “earthshine” lighting up the darkened portion of the moon.

Sunlight reflecting off of the Earth makes it possible to see features illuminated on the nighttime side of the moon. The striking view of the crescent moon and twinkly star cluster hanging together in the evening sky offers a real cosmic moment.

A total eclipse of the sun across the USA on April 8

If you walked out in your backyard and said, “I’m not leaving this spot until I see a total eclipse of the sun,” you would be waiting for an average of 375 years, according to the website TimeAndDate.com.

Millions of people in North America won’t have to wait that long, however, because a total eclipse of the sun is due to sweep across the continent on April 8. The 120-mile-wide path of totality will cross or touch 15 U.S. states: Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Tennessee, Kentucky, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine.

Seven-million people in the Dallas/Ft. Worth metro area are directly in the total eclipse path and half of the U.S. population lives within 250 miles of it. Even parts of Mexico and Canada are in the path. It’s no wonder that this total eclipse is being billed as the Great North American Eclipse.

Observers on the centerline of the eclipse will experience up to 4 minutes and 20 seconds of darkness, twice as long as the total eclipse of Aug. 21, 2017. If you miss totality this time, you’ll have to wait until 2044 and 2045 before the moon’s umbral shadow touches the lower 48 states again. That’s quite an eclipse drought.

Of course, there is a total eclipse happening somewhere on the earth almost every year, and thousands of “eclipse chasers” travel to where the action is instead of waiting in their backyards for totality to come to them. There is something strangely addictive about watching the sun, the life-giving source of Earth’s light and heat, getting devoured by a black orb at midday and being replaced by a ghostly corona with giant pink flames leaping into space against a starry background.

Some ancient cultures would shoot arrows and beat drums to scare away whatever ate the sun, and it always seemed to work. Without a doubt, the total solar eclipse of April 8 is the No. 1 celestial event of the coming year.

Comet Pons-Brooks and Planet Uranus appear close to Jupiter on April 13

Astronomer David Levy famously said, “Comets are like cats: They have tails and they do precisely what they want.” Predict a comet’s behavior at your own risk. Having said that, I am including this event in my top ten list because it has the potential to be a wonderful sight, especially in binoculars.

Comet Pons-Brooks, like its more famous cousin Comet Halley, is a periodic comet that returns to the inner solar system about once in a lifetime. It swings by Earth every 71 years.

Although not as spectacular as Halley’s Comet, Comet Pons-Brooks is noteworthy because it experiences sudden, unpredictable outbursts that can cause it to brighten 100-fold overnight. Already, in 2023, it has erupted several times on its way into the inner solar system.

So, on the night of April 13, there is no way to predict exactly how bright Comet Pons-Brooks will be or how long its tail might be when it passes only 3 degrees below brilliant Jupiter in our evening sky. At the very least, it will be an easy target for binoculars, and it might even be visible to the unaided eye.

As an extra bonus, the distant planet Uranus will be visible as a faint “star” in binoculars, only 1 degree above Jupiter on the same night. Start looking in the WNW sky about an hour after sunset. If Comet Pons-Brooks decides it wants to, it could put on a spectacular show alongside two planets.

Mars appears very close to Uranus before dawn July 15

Five planets are easily visible to the unaided eye: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. A sixth planet is barely visible to the human eye in a dark clear sky, if you know right where to look.

This sixth planet is Uranus, originally named “George’s Star” as a tribute to King George III.  In a wide-open sky, it is very challenging to spot Uranus, so having a bright signpost to guide you makes all the difference.

On July 15, the planet Mars will appear only half a degree away from Uranus while both are in our constellation of Taurus, not far from the Pleiades star cluster and the dazzling planet Jupiter, also in Taurus. This is an early morning event.

The best viewing time will be between 3-4 a.m. about two handspans above the eastern horizon. Ruddy Mars will be easy to spot, shining a little brighter that the nearby bright star Aldebaran. Seeing Uranus will probably require binoculars, since Mars outshines it by a factor of nearly 100 times.

Uranus will look like a greenish “star,” slightly to the upper left of Mars. There will be a star of similar brightness visible to the lower right of Mars, but there should be no confusion. Once you’ve identified Uranus in binoculars, see if you can spot it without optical aid. Using averted vision might help. Once you’ve spotted it, you can proudly check the planet George off of your observing list.

The peak of the Perseid Meteor Shower on Aug. 12

It is always exciting to look up at the sky and see a brilliant “falling star” streak across the heavens. There are certain nights during the year when dozens of “falling stars” can be seen in a single hour of sky watching.

These are our annual meteor showers, and the most famous of them is the Perseid meteor shower that occurs in mid-August every year. Meteor showers occur when the Earth plows through the leftover dust trail of a comet or, in a couple of cases, an asteroid.

The Earth encounters the dust stream of Comet Swift-Tuttle every August, producing our Perseid meteor shower. In a clear, dark, moonless sky, a single observer can expect to see between 60 and 90 Perseid meteors or “falling stars” each hour during the night of peak activity, which this year is predicted to occur between midnight and dawn on the early morning of Aug. 12.

The waxing gibbous moon will set before midnight, leaving the sky dark and perfect for meteor watching. The meteors will appear to streak out of the constellation Perseus in our NE sky, hence the name of the shower, but they can be seen in any and all directions. Bundle up and enjoy the fireworks!

Mars passes very close to Jupiter before dawn Aug. 14

When two of the major naked-eye planets pass close to each other in the sky, it is always a spectacular sight. The best opportunity to see a close planetary conjunction in 2024 will be in the predawn hours of Aug. 14, when the red planet Mars passes less than a third of a degree from the giant planet Jupiter.

That’s not quite close enough for them to appear to blend into a single “star,” but they will stand out as a striking “double planet.” The background for this conjunction is the beautiful constellation of Taurus, the Bull, with its V-shaped Hyades star cluster and dipper-shaped Pleiades star cluster and bright red alpha star Aldebaran.

The best observing time will be 4-5 a.m., high up in the eastern sky. The apparent closeness of Mars and Jupiter is really a line-of-sight illusion since Jupiter will lie 3.5 times farther from Earth than Mars at that time. The two planets will appear so close that they easily will fit together in the eyepiece of a backyard telescope.

Seeing two planets close-up in a telescope at the same time is an unforgettable sight. But that’s not all. In addition to the two major planets, you also can spot Jupiter’s four giant moons — Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto — looking like little “stars” flanking Jupiter.

Don’t miss this opportunity to see six solar system worlds at the same time through your telescope — a rare opportunity indeed.

The moon eclipses Saturn in Aquarius before dawn Sept. 17

This event is the first of a fantastic double-header of top 10 events on the same date. The moon will eclipse the planet Saturn just before dawn. The technical term for the eclipse of a planet by the moon is an occultation.

Only the western third of the USA will get to see this occultation and, in Colorado, only the disappearance will be visible as the moon will set before Saturn reappears. The backdrop for this occultation is the constellation of Aquarius.

Start watching no later than 5 a.m. MDT low in the western sky. The moon will be bright and almost full. Saturn will seem to be hovering just above the moon until 5:13 a.m., when the eclipse begins. Because Saturn is a ball and not a point of light, it won’t wink out instantly, but will take about 30 seconds to completely disappear behind the dark edge of the moon.

No optical aid is needed, but a pair of ordinary binoculars will enhance the view and the view through any telescope will knock your socks off. Thirty seconds after Saturn disappears, its giant moon Titan will disappear behind the moon, too. Folks living on the West Coast also will get to see Saturn pop out from behind the moon, but not in Colorado.

A partial eclipse of full super Harvest Moon on Sept. 17

The second event in the Sept. 17 double-header is a partial eclipse of the full super Harvest Moon. Every non-luminous world in the solar system casts a shadow in space and, occasionally, one world’s shadow falls onto another.

This is the case during a lunar eclipse when the shadow of the Earth is cast onto the Moon. Eclipses of the moon can only occur during the full moon phase. This one is a so-called “super moon” because the full moon happens at the same time that it is at its closest point to Earth, called perigee.

A full super moon appears especially big and bright in our sky. It is the Harvest Moon because it is the full moon that occurs closest to the first day of autumn on Sept. 22. The full super Harvest Moon will skim through the edge of Earth’s umbral shadow, with only 8% of the full moon covered at mid-eclipse.

The partial eclipse begins at 8:12 p.m., mid eclipse at 8:44 p.m. and the partial eclipse is over at 10:15 p.m. While not as spectacular as a total eclipse of the moon, this partial eclipse is still cool to watch. Notice that the edge of Earth’s shadow on the moon is curved.

This observation tipped off the ancient Greek sky watchers that the Earth must be shaped like a sphere in order to always cast a circular shadow. The next total eclipse of the moon visible from Colorado will be on the night of March 13-14, 2025.

New Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS passes closest to Earth on Oct. 12

OK, here’s another roll of the dice for a new comet making my top 10 list. As astronomer Fred Whipple once said, “If you must bet, bet on a horse, not a comet!”

But to me, this new comet looks very promising for a pretty good show. Its name is Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS, after the two observatories that first spotted it in early 2023. We can just call it Comet TA for short.

One reason we can be optimistic about Comet TA is because it has never been into the inner solar system, at least not in historical times, so we have no inkling of its former behavior. If — and that’s a BIG IF — if the comet continues at its current rate of brightening as it approaches the sun, it could be the brightest comet that we have seen in many years.

It will pass only 0.39 AU from the sun’s scorching surface Sept. 27 and then execute a hairpin turn and head for Earth, passing within 0.47 AU from our planet Oct. 12. On that evening, one hour after sunset, Comet TA might be easily visible with the unaided eye, shining as bright as one of the brightest stars and sporting a tail that could be as long as … OK, I’m not going to go there.

That’s what makes comet watching so exciting. You never know what you are going to get until you get it. So, stay tuned for updates in the months ahead and keep your fingers crossed for a magnificent show from Comet TA next fall.