Astronomers are reaching to comprehend the origins of the universe, giving us the gift of contemplating the cosmos to which each of us on planet Earth belongs. The artist’s conception of early star formation, above, conveys an exquisite experience of cosmic dawn at “the transition when the universe went from a foggy opacity to the stunning, star-filled expanse we observe today.” Go to the story from NASA that is told in both audio and text media. Find an introduction to the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScl) here. Access NASA’s collection of Webb Telescope deep-space images here.

I read and reread various captions written to introduce space artist Adolf Schaller’s conception of early star formation, the beginnings of our universe as we are coming to know it. Striving to grasp what seems the vocabulary of infinite time and space, I found this “First Stars: Timeline of the Universe.” Ahha! To start with the Big Bang, roughly 13.8 billion years ago, and to see that our Sun formed about 9 billion years later, are concrete introductions to the grandeur of the cosmos.
Now, let’s turn to the grandeur of our view of night skies away from light pollution.
This star chart appears in “What’s up: January 2025 Skywatching Tips from NASA.” The wonderful presence of the four naked-eye planets in a string in our sky, described and illustrated in the December edition of “Eyes to the Sky,” continues, with dynamic additions.
This evening, Saturday, January 18, is a special time for viewing brilliant planet Venus with less bright Saturn: They are in conjunction, appearing very close to each other rather high in the southwest at about 5:15 p.m. The two set in the west-southwest around 8:15 p.m. Look every evening to notice Saturn appear below Venus, setting earlier every night. Planet Venus, known as the Evening Star, is brighter than all the true stars.
Planet Jupiter, second to Venus in luminosity, appears in the east-southeast, about as high as Venus and Saturn in late twilight. Jupiter is in the vicinity of Taurus the Bull, above Orion the Hunter.
This is a remarkable time to observe Mars at its brightest, nearly as bright as Sirius the Dog Star, the brightest true star in Earth’s skies. See the Red Planet in the east at nightfall, around 6:30 p.m. in the coming week, and traveling the sky all night. Note that Mars dims considerably each successive evening.

This delightful and informative picture book is captivating to very young children and is a book that will continue to engage as they become able to read and conceptualize outer space. The author tells the outline of the story in one- to two-line phrases embedded in vivid illustrations. Almost every page has a paragraph or more of informative prose to be read and studied at the appropriate age. Recommended for ages four to eight years, I observed captivated two-year-olds attentive to a grandparent reading the text.
“Micah liked the book,” grandfather related to me in a note I solicited. “I was afraid some of the concepts were beyond him but he clearly enjoyed it. He liked the idea that we can see Venus and Mars clearly and this sets us up for naked eye astronomy. Also birthdays tie in to planetary movements around the sun. Lastly he was trying to understand the difference between rocky planets and the gas giants.”
Locally, purchase at The Bookloft in Great Barrington.