Important celestial events An exciting year awaits astronomers

Auroras, solar explosions and lunar eclipses: 2025 promises to be an exciting year for astronomers. The most important celestial events:

Keystone-SDA

01.01.2025, 19:00

SDA

A new star is set to appear in the firmament in 2025 - at least for a few days. According to astronomers, everything has been pointing to a stellar explosion in the "T Coronae Borealis" star system 2700 light years away for months. Two suns orbit each other in this star system. A white dwarf and a red giant. The white dwarf sucks matter from its companion star. At some point this becomes too much and the star discharges in a huge nuclear explosion. The resulting nova will then shine as brightly as Polaris for about a week. This happens approximately every 80 years. The last nova in this system occurred in 1946.

The sun will partially eclipse twice in 2025. However, only the first solar eclipse on March 29 will be visible from Switzerland. At 11.17 a.m., the moon will begin to move in front of the sun. The peak of the eclipse will be reached at 12.04 pm. At this time, the sun will be 14 percent eclipsed over Bern. The second partial solar eclipse on September 21, 2025 will only be visible from the South Pacific and New Zealand. The next total solar eclipse in Switzerland will not take place until September 3, 2081.

Two lunar eclipses are also scheduled for 2025. On March 14 and September 7, the Earth will move between the moon and the sun, completely eclipsing the moon. However, the first one will not be completely visible in this country. When the moon sets in Bern at 6.50 am, it will only be partially eclipsed. During the lunar eclipse on September 7, however, the moon will already be completely in the shadow of the Earth when it rises at 7.55 pm. The first rays of sunlight reach the edge of the moon's surface again from 8.52 pm.

In 2025, auroras are also likely to be visible again in our latitudes. The reason: the high level of solar activity. The sun becomes more and less active in an 11-year cycle. According to astronomers, the current solar cycle has recently reached its maximum. This means that the sun is currently in a particularly active phase. In 2025, a similar number of solar storms are likely to hit the Earth's atmosphere as in 2024.