Planet parade, meteor showers and more: Here's celestial calender of 2025

As the world enters 2025, the new year is expected to see plenty of wow celestial moments including supermoons and planet parade in 2025.

The year will start with six-planet parade in January that will be visible for weeks. Little Mercury will join the crowd for a seven-planet lineup in February. Five planets already are scattered across the sky - all but Mars and Mercury - though binoculars or telescopes are needed to spot some of them just after sunset.

"People should go out and see them sometime during the next many weeks. I certainly will," said the Planetary Society's chief scientist Bruce Betts.

Here's a schedule of celestial activties of 2025:

ECLIPSES

The moon will vanish for more than an hour over North and South America on March 14, followed two weeks later by a partial solar eclipse visible from Maine, eastern Canada, Greenland, Europe, Siberia and northwestern Africa. The same phenomenon will repeat in September with an even longer total lunar eclipse over Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia, and a partial solar eclipse two weeks later near the bottom of the world.

SUPERMOONS

Three supermoons are scheduled in October, November and December. The full moon will look particularly big and bright those three months as it orbits closer to Earth than usual.

November's supermoon will come closest, passing within 221,817 miles (356,980 kilometres). Last year featured four supermoons, wrapping up in November.

PLANET PARADE

Six of our seven neighbouring planets will line up in the sky to form a long arc around mid-January. All but Neptune and Uranus should be visible with the naked eye just after sunset, weather permitting.

The parade will continue for weeks, with some of the planets occasionally snuggling up. Mercury will make a cameo appearance by the end of February. The planets will gradually exit, one by one, through spring.

NORTHERN AND SOUTHERN LIGHTS

Space weather forecasters anticipate geomagnetic storms that could yield even more northern and southern lights. The reason behind the storms is because the sun has reached its solar maximum during its current 11-year cycle that could continue through this year.

METEOR SHOWERS

The Perseids and Geminids are perennial crowd-pleasers, peaking in August and December, respectively. But don't count out the smaller, less dramatic meteor showers like the Lyrids in April, the Orionids in October and the Leonids in November.

The darker the locale and dimmer the moon, the better it will be for viewing. Meteor showers are generally named for the constellation in which they appear to originate. They occur whenever Earth plows through streams of debris left behind by comets and sometimes asteroids.

(with AP inputs)