The night sky this week 7 January to 13 January 2019.

Let's take a look at some of the things we can expect from our night skies this week. Also please note this is from a Southern Hemisphere perspective.
All the images are from Skysafari 6 Pro.

THE MOON

Tonight, Jan 6, sees the new Moon, so most of this week will be Moon free and excellent for some deep sky viewing.
The Moon will resurface on Wednesday evening low on our western horizon and start to have an effect on the quality of the sky in the coming nights and by Saturday night it will be 33% illuminated.

PLANETS

Mars is still sitting in our western skies in Pisces, it will be the sole naked eye planet left in the evenings of January, Venus and Jupiter are still visible in the early mornings as Mercury begins to fade from view as a morning planet.
In the scope you might still be able to pick up both Uranus and Neptune.

DEEP SKY OBSERVING(URBAN).

 These are a few of the deep sky objects that I feel are worth a look in the early evenings. Even for the seasoned observers these are always worth a revisit.
There are two targets worthy of a mention for this week as both are well placed in the early evening skies.

NGC 2070, Tarantula Nebula, C103.

Always worth taking a look at this massive Nebula in the Large Magellanic cloud. Also remember that this is in a dwarf galaxy outside of our own. In darker skies it is readily visible naked eye.
In and around the nebula there are also many clusters and smaller bright nebula to investigate.
With larger aperture some globular cluster are also visible! It's easy to spend a full night observing the LMC and it's many treasures.
Your log book fills up real quick as this is one of those regions where star hopping is easily replaced with cluster hopping.

Small Magellanic cloud(SMC) , Dwarf galaxy.

There are a few items of interest in the SMC,
NGC 362 is a nice globular cluster to take in along with NGC 346 a bright nebula.
Then there is also the more famous globular cluster nearby, that is not part of the SMC, in the form of NGC 104 also known as 47 Tucanae or simply TUC47.
The SMC fares better under darker skies or with bigger aperture under urban skies like mine.
 

ISS

The ISS will make several visible passes over Durban this week and should be witnessed from most of South Africa too.
On Sunday 6th Jan we will have 2 passes with one pass each day for Monday through Thursday.

To see when it will be overhead for you check the NASA webpage here:  Spot the station.
Image courtesy of NASA.

For the later evenings and early mornings Vela, Crux, Carina and Centaurus begin to rise and each of these constellations holds a absolute treasure trove of goodies.
As the weeks progress we shall delve further into some of those.

However you choose to observe the skies this week, naked eye, with binoculars or your favourite scope, enjoy the views and clear skies to you all.