TUNGSTEN VALLEY — Every thirteen months, we race past Jupiter like a fast car on a speedway’s inside track. That time is now: January 2026.

We’ll overtake Jove on January 10, when we’ll be smack on the line that connects the gas giant with the sun. It’s called opposition, because the sun will be directly opposite Jupiter in our sky. Jupiter will rise in the northeast just as the sun sets, and will set exactly at sunrise the next morning.

This being as close as we can ever get to Jupiter, now is the best time to view it through binoculars or a telescope. Take in its four main moons encircling it like a miniature solar system. Gaze at its multicolored cloud bands. And try to see the Great Red Spot, not as visible as it was four centuries ago, but still distinct.

At midnight Jupiter will be nearly overhead, at 74 degrees above the horizon. You’ll feel your straining neck muscles when you crane up at it. Then, the next day, the sun will only creep 28 degrees above the horizon at noon.

74 versus 28 degrees: that’s quite a difference. If you think for a moment, that variance ought to seem strange because after all, Jupiter and the sun both ride in the same identical solar system plane, the pancake-like ecliptic disc where all the solar system’s main bodies live.

What’s with these wildly different horizon altitudes when everybody resides in one geometrical plane?

The answer is that although the planets and the sun are all flying in one plane, the angle from which we view them whirls madly around as we stand on this carnival-ride spinning top we call the earth.

At noon in winter we’re tilted backward from the sun and it’s low in the sky. Then just twelve hours later, at midnight, we’re tilted forward toward Jupiter and it’s high in the sky. The difference in those two sky altitudes should be twice our axial tilt, or 46 degrees. Check that against the difference in the two numbers, 74 and 28, above.

The reverse happens when a Jupiter opposition occurs in summer: The sun is high at noon and the planet is low at midnight. All the outer planets, Mars through Neptune, do this. As for the inner planets, Venus and Mercury, they always linger close to the sun year-round. And while we’re at it, everybody’s sky positions equilibrate at the two annual equinoxes.

The sum of all these movements should have added up to a dead giveaway to the Greeks, and to later medieval astronomers: that the earth was orbiting the sun along with all the planets.

Instead, for two thousand years (400 BC to 1600 AD) everybody made the planets’ motions look like pretzels, while holding the earth motionless at the center of the solar system and the universe.

Why? Because common sense said that if we don’t feel like we’re spinning, then we aren’t. It was a two millennium-long triumph of emotion over reason.

In January Skies:

The sun begins the month in Sagittarius, entering Capricorn on January 20. At mid-month, Nederland days and nights are 9.7 and 14.3 hours long, respectively.

The moon’s dates are: Full (Wolf Moon) January 3; Last Quarter January 10; New January 18; First Quarter January 26.

January Meteors: The Quadrantid shower (parent asteroid 2003 EH1) peaks just before dawn on January 4. The Gamma Ursae Minorid shower (from an unidentified short-period parent) peaks in the pre-dawn hours of January 19.

Best Sky Viewing Nights (Minimal Moon): January 10-25.

Sunset (Mid-Month): The Pleiades, Orion, and Castor and Pollux are rising. Capella is bright-white in the ENE. The Andromeda Galaxy is directly overhead. The squashed “W” of Cassiopeia is a bit northward. The Great Square of Pegasus is just westward of overhead. Deneb is high in the northwest.

Midnight (Mid-Month): Orange Arcturus and brilliant white Spica are rising in the east. Leo, with burnt-orangish Regulus, is mid-height in the eastern sky. Procyon is high in the south, to the left of Orion and well above Sirius. Cassiopeia is low in the northwest.

Sunrise (Mid-Month): Altair is rising in the east. Antares, the Scorpion’s angry eye, is low in the southeast. Vega is high in the northeast, with Deneb below it and to the left. Leo is low in the west while Capella sets in the northwest.

Mercury, in Sagittarius, is lost in the sunrise.

Venus, in Capricorn, is lost in the evening sunset.

Mars, in Capricorn, is right in the sun.

Jupiter, in Gemini, is at opposition and moving full-speed retrograde on January 10. It strikes quite a pose with Castor and Pollux.

Saturn, in Aquarius, is low in the southwest at sunset, setting at 10 p.m. Neptune is three degrees above it and slightly to the left.

Notable Space Missions: Blue Origin is targeting January for its Blue Moon Pathfinder Mission 1, an uncrewed south-pole lunar lander. This mission is significant because another company that was supposed to build and fly an American crewed lunar lander has fallen years behind schedule.

Concerned that the next crewed lunar landing won’t be American, NASA is looking at a modified version of Pathfinder to make up for lost time and perhaps fly that American crewed landing instead.

Frank Sanders, a spectrum scientist, takes astronomy-related inquiries at backyardastronomy1@gmail.com.