## Starcast Transcript: January 18, 2026

**Mike Lewinski:** Good morning.

**Jay Shaffer:** Good morning, Mike. Still feeling a little rough.

**Mike Lewinski:** Yeah, yeah, a little bit better every day, but… Still congested.

**Jay Shaffer:** Okay. If you want me to take that second news story, just can throw to me, and then if you're feeling less confident about your voice.

**Mike Lewinski:** Alright, well, let's see how it goes. I think I can probably do it.

**Jay Shaffer:** Okay. Alright.

**Mike Lewinski:** I've got transcript on, I've got recording going.

**Jay Shaffer:** Okay, let's hit this. Let's hit this mother. Okay… 3, 2, 1.

Welcome to the Starcast for the week of January 18th, 2026. I'm your host, Jay Shaffer, and with me is my co-host Mike Lewinski. I guess you're a little bit under the weather and caught this flu there, huh, Mike? 

**Mike Lewinski:** Yeah, the vaccine didn't completely save me, but it didn't get as bad as it might have been. 

**Jay Shaffer:** Yeah, fortunately, unfortunately, I had my encounter over Christmas. And yeah, and I was also vaccinated, but they said that flu A was kind of resistant, and it was not fun. So, what's our space weather looking like over the next couple of days and nights there, Mike? 

**Mike Lewinski:** Well, Jay, there's a couple sunspot groups with Beta Delta magnetic fields that pose a threat of M-class flares. We're keeping an eye on sunspot 4343 and 4341. Currently, our predicted chance of M-class flares is around 55% for the next 2 days, with a much lower chance of X-class flares at around 5%. This translates for us here in mid-latitudes; we have around a 45% chance of active geomagnetic conditions in the next 24 hours, dropping to 35% over the 24 to 48 hour range, and it diminishes from there. A chance of severe conditions is very low at about 5%. However, if you're at high latitudes, there's a 70% chance of severe geomagnetic storm today, and a 50% chance tomorrow. So… what's up in the night sky this week, Jay? 

**Jay Shaffer:** Well, it's a new moon today. The moment of the new moon will fall at about 1952 UTC today, January 18th, 2026, and that's about 1:52 PM Central Standard Time, and that will be just about the time that we publish this podcast. It's also a great week for planetary observations. Saturn will get a hug from the waxing crescent moon on the evenings of January 22nd and 23rd. Look to the southwest in the evening, just before midnight, and you should be able to see Saturn and its moons and its rings. And then to the east, Jupiter is still bright in the evening sky, chasing Orion. And at this time of year, even in moderately light-polluted skies, you may be able to see the fuzziness on Orion's sword, that is, the Orion Nebula. You would almost certainly be able to see that with a good pair of binoculars. So, Mike, what do you have for us in space news? 

**Mike Lewinski:** Well, Jay, some good news. NASA has officially moved the Artemis II rocket to the historic launch pad 39B at Florida's Kennedy Space Center, marking a major milestone for the first crewed lunar mission in over half a century. The 12-hour rollout was completed on Saturday, January 17, 2026, and positions the spacecraft for a 10-day journey that will carry astronauts around the Moon and back to Earth. While the mission will not include a lunar landing, it will serve as a critical final test of the Orion spacecraft's life support systems with the crew on board. With the rocket now in place, engineers are preparing for a wet dress rehearsal later this month to test fueling procedures and countdown sequences. The launch windows are dictated by precise celestial alignments between Earth and Moon, with the first opportunity opening on February 6, 2026. If all systems are go, the mission is expected to lift off between February and April, officially returning humanity to deep space. 

And in other good news, in a decisive bipartisan move, Congress has passed a comprehensive appropriations bill that fully funds NASA with a $24.4 billion budget for the current fiscal year. The Senate cleared the minibus spending package on Thursday, January 15th by an 82 to 15 vote, following a similarly lopsided victory in the House last week. The final figures rejected deep spending cuts previously proposed by the White House, ensuring stable funding for NASA, NOAA, and the National Science Foundation. The bill now heads to the President's desk, where it is widely expected to be signed into law. Despite the administration's earlier calls for budget reductions, the White House issued a statement confirming that the President will be recommended to sign the legislation as written. Space policy experts suggest this funding stability is crucial for maintaining the momentum of major exploration initiatives, including the Artemis program and critical climate research.  So, that's the news. Jay, what's our topic for today? 

**Jay Shaffer:** Well, Mike, I thought we'd talk about doing astronomy and observing the night sky during this winter season. Maybe we can share some tips and some techniques and opportunities that are unique to this cold season. How about we talk about opportunities first? Mike, what special things do you look for during the winter night sky? 

**Mike Lewinski:** Well, always, Orion, as mentioned earlier, and the Nebula. Also, the Pleiades, very prominent and fun to look at in the winter night sky. Around this time of year, just before dawn, the Milky Way galaxy is lying on the horizon 360 degrees. Where I am with the mountains, it's a little difficult to see it all the way around, but this is a special time of year; it's the only time of year where that happens. And Jay, winter stargazing, for as difficult as the cold weather may be, really has some nice advantages. Cold air really reduces the capacity of air to hold moisture. At 0 degrees Celsius, air can only hold about a half a percent of water vapor, whereas at 30 degrees C, that capacity is up around 3%. So this means that we have lower absolute humidity during the winter, and even with high relative humidity, it's still very low moisture content. The sinking cold air contracts and creates high pressure zones that suppress moisture transport, and that hampers cloud formation, leading to clearer skies. And of course, we just have more darkness in the wintertime. There's more, up to 15 hours of darkness around the solstice. So, the winter skies are clearer and darker for a longer period than we have during the rest of the year. And so this is a great time, with proper preparations, to get out and see some of these sites, the Orion and Pleiades in particular. So, Jay, what are your techniques and tips for winter astronomy? 

**Jay Shaffer:** Yeah, and I want to elaborate on the atmosphere being cold; it also has a lot less convection, and therefore a lot less turbulence, and so what we call astronomical seeing is better. And if you can look at the charts, night observing is during the winter because of the colder air masses, that we end up with better seeing conditions. And the targets that are available, like you said, Orion, the Pleiades, obviously, and it's also a great time to observe deep space objects. Andromeda is high in the sky, and you can see that galaxy. And there's a bunch of DSOs to the north, or deep space objects to the north, that are observable at this time of year. And since Polaris is actually higher in the sky during the winter months, we get to see some of these galaxies that we don't get to see so much in the summer, including the Whirlpool galaxy and Bodes Galaxy, are a couple examples that are observable this time of year. And, of course, you mentioned Jupiter and Saturn are both up and available right now, and again, with the good seeing conditions and the time and night where they're both available in the evening, then that 8 to 9 perfect hour for observing is you'll be able to observe the planets, and without staying up too late, seeing Jupiter's moons and Saturn's rings. 

However, this time of year is not so great for meteor showers, but we do have the Alpha Centaurids coming up here in late January and mid-February, and a couple little minor ones, and particularly there's the IHRSA minorids to the north right now. And so, with this new moon right now, it might be a good opportunity to kind of look to the north during this time. So those are kind of the observing targets, and like you mentioned, the Milky Way, while it's not that big core that we see in the summertime, like you said, it kind of lies on the eastern horizon just before dawn. And it's an opportunity if you're shooting a mosaic where you can shoot a panoramic mosaic, and that's where you see those images of the full Milky Way, where it's basically a Milky Way rainbow. So this is a good time of year to do that. So, of course, there are difficulties with dealing with the cold, and just this time of year, so what special techniques do you have there, Mike, for dealing with the cold and how handling your equipment? 

**Mike Lewinski:** Sure, yeah, there's both protecting myself from the cold temperatures and then protecting the gear. Obviously, when actually being outside and observing, I dress warmly, paying a special attention to good wool socks and insulated boots, and keeping my head very warm. If I'm going to be out for an extended period of time, we have a fire pit here, and I have some star maps that are printed on only one side of the paper, and so I will actually have a fire to warm myself by, and I will use that fire to two effects. First of all, to warm myself, and second of all, I can hold the star map to position in such a way that it blocks the fire from my view, which means it's being illuminated from underneath. So if I'm trying to learn constellations, it's a great way to have the map illuminated while also preserving most of my night vision. 

As far as gear goes, lens warmers are probably the most important piece of equipment that I have in the wintertime, but there's really a double-edged sword. The problem is that the lens warmers require power, and the very, very cold weather diminishes and can even stop my external lithium batteries from supplying power. So, I need more batteries on my cameras to run the lens warmers, but at a certain point, somewhere below zero degrees Fahrenheit, the batteries themselves give out. And so I've always imagined having this Ouroboros of lens warmers and batteries connected to lens warmers to keep the batteries warm enough, but it doesn't quite work out. I think I'd need a 200-foot extension cord to reach house power out to my cameras so that I could just power the lens warmers all night long. Nonetheless, I do have a very large battery that I take out, and I use just for my two lens warmers. And I find if I start and I plug in the lens warmers around 6pm when it's getting dark, by about 6 AM I've exhausted my large battery bank. In fact, I was out yesterday morning, and I heard it beep as it died. So, I can just, just barely make it through the night, or not quite, but usually that's enough to avoid frost on my lenses. Otherwise, and there are times when my camera batteries cease to—they drained very rapidly in the cold weather, so it's like, not only do you need a lens warmer for the lens, but you need a lens warmer for the battery compartment, and it just becomes a problem that exacerbates itself as it gets colder. And I have done time lapses at minus 10, minus 20 degrees, and it's just a given that after a few hours, my batteries are just going to be dead, and external battery packs will no longer charge them. So there is some cutoff temperature between about minus 5 and minus 10 where my equipment starts to—the batteries just die.  So, what about you, Jay? What are your preparations? 

**Jay Shaffer:** Well, it is all about being prepared, and so I tend to actually start setting out my gear while it's still light out and relatively warm. The idea being that I try to basically frame my shot for the time lapse and get all my gear out there and ready before it gets dark and gets too cold so that I'm not out there shivering, trying to fiddle with settings on the camera, or in my case, a Star Tracker or something like that. And so, getting that kind of gear out there early and while you actually can see it in the light and getting all the settings set up, and then I basically just kind of put it on standby so that when it does get dark—which is fortunate that it does get dark earlier in the winter—is that I can just basically go out there and press the shutter button, and things get started. And so not only my time-lapse camera, but I'll be also setting out my smart telescope, the C-Star S50. And it has a built-in dew heater, and which is a good thing, and of course, that does greatly decrease its battery life as well. And that S50 has an internal battery, and pretty much in your experience, if it's running the dew heater, it may be good for maybe 3 or 4 hours, depending on the temperature, and as it gets colder, of course, it's not going to want to operate. 

So, yeah, I'll actually run that off of a battery as well, and so in my particular case is that I go ahead and run those 100-foot extension cords out to the location where I'm taking the time lapse or I've got the telescope set up. And so I've kind of got a couple locations around my house here that I use, and I've actually got extension cords running out to them. And, essentially, since I'm living off-grid, they are running off of batteries, and so it is entirely a solar-powered observatory. But by using those extension cords, then I kind of avoid the worry of having my lithium-ion portable batteries out there in the cold. And then, on the dew heaters, since I'll be using either an All-Sky or a 14mm wide-angle lens on the camera, and on my Lumix camera in particular, that lens is so shallow, it's a little pancake lens, that you can't really wrap the dew heater around the lens specifically. And so what I found is I can take that dew heater and wrap it around the bottom of the camera, and since heat rises, the heat from the heater actually rises over in front of the lens. And I don't get any heat waves, which thank goodness, but it does keep that frost off of that lens, and so that's how I've been able to actually use the dew heater and basically kind of create a field around the camera that is warmer air to try to keep the frost off. 

And then, like you just mentioned, dressing for visual observation if I'm going out there and I'm actually looking through a telescope. I've got my what I call my full metal parka, and it's really, really thick down, and it's good to well below zero. And then I have mittens that have a slot on them where you can put your fingers outside of the mittens and do any necessary adjustments that you need to do. And then I've also found that it's very important not to breathe on the eyepiece of your telescope. It's just kind of easy to do, but many times I've gone out to look through the eyepiece on the telescope and inadvertently breathe on it, and it fogs up or frosts up, and then you have to wait for 15 minutes to even look through it. 

**Mike Lewinski:** Yeah, can I add something onto that, Jay? I caution that I've acquired has to do with when I'm changing lenses during very cold weather. And so I have kind of two guidelines to change a lens. First of all, if I'm going outside, I will take the lens that I want to put on the camera and I will pre-cool it for 20 minutes or longer. I'll just set the lens outside so that it basically comes to ambient temperatures by the time I'm swapping lenses out in the field. And if for some reason I'm going to bring the camera in, at that point, I'm not going to take the lens off for an hour or two, because I've made the mistake of bringing in a camera. I had it mounted onto one of my telescopes, and I brought the telescope in, and I wanted to switch back to doing a time lapse, and it was a mistake because the moment that I unmounted the camera, my sensor immediately fogged up. And there's no really good, safe way to dry off a sensor, so I just kind of had to wait and let the moisture evaporate off of it, which took a while. 

**Jay Shaffer:** Yeah, and I also have a nylon rain cover, and I will actually put that on the cameras, even though I know there's not going to be any precipitation, but there may be frost. And that keeps that frost from accumulating on the camera, and it actually captures some of that heat from the lens heater that I mentioned underneath there, and kind of forms a warm envelope for the camera. And that way I don't have to deal with bringing the camera in in the morning with a frost-covered camera and try to have it not turn into a wet mess. 

**Mike Lewinski:** You know, I bought some of those recently, and I've been meaning to try them out. When I do—and my cameras are almost always frost-covered when I bring them in—the one precaution that I take is as soon as I bring them in, I loosen the ball head and I point the lens down so that any moisture that a frost of melting is rolling off of the lens hood and not onto the lens itself. 

**Jay Shaffer:** Yeah, and your Sony cameras are fairly weatherized, aren't they? 

**Mike Lewinski:** They are, they are. 

**Jay Shaffer:** So that's a helpful thing, and something to consider in choosing a camera. And then the final thing is that I think one of the beauties of smart telescopes—and which is the thing that has got me, I've done so much more astronomy now that I can use the S50—and set that up outside, and choose my targets, and I can be inside and observing on my phone or my tablet what the telescope is capturing and staying warm. And I can even cast this to my large screen TV and sit in the living room and watch what I'm observing. And so this is one of the huge, wonderful things about these smart telescopes, whatever brand that you might choose. 

And then, also, in addition to the time lapses that we both do, and we're both more kind of white sky observers more than deep space object observers, is that before I got the smart telescope, what I would do for deep space objects is I would actually rent time on a remote telescope. And so that way I would have—there was a telescope that was located down in southern New Mexico that I could rent time on, and basically, I would tell them I want to look at the Whirlpool galaxy tonight between 10 and 12 midnight, and I want you to take this many exposures, and then send me the files.  And it was fairly reasonable; I mean, it would be like $20 to $40 per image set. And then I could process those images and get some nice deep sky object observations. So anything else you can think of that are special about winter there, Mike? 

**Mike Lewinski:** No, nothing else is coming right to mind, but I would just add that I kind of consider the Leonid and Geminid meteor showers to be winter season showers. They may not strictly fall during the period of December 21st to March 21st, but the weather's cold enough that I kind of really look forward to wintertime, and especially for our November and December meteor showers; really October, November, December are just fantastic months for meteors. 

**Jay Shaffer:** Yeah, I think I'll point the old time lapse up north tonight with the new moon, and hopefully catch a couple meteors, although I really wish that we were having a little bit more space weather right now. Okay, I'm going to go ahead and wrap this up. I want to thank all of our listeners for checking out the podcast. Be sure to comment, like, and subscribe as always, and let us know what you'd like to hear more about. You can also check out our individual websites: Mike's is WildernessVagabonds.com and mine is Skylapser.com. You can also see Mike's time lapses on the Mike Lewinski YouTube channel, so definitely search Mike's name and check that out. And you can check out my review of the T-Seq Star Tracker on my YouTube channel, and that's Skylapser. Our intro music as always is Fanfare for Space by Kevin MacLeod from the YouTube Audio Library. And from the Deep Sage Nine Observatory, this is Jay Shaffer and Mike Lewinski wishing you all clear skies.