We absolutely need to do astronomy to keep track of what thing is going to bump into earth, to say the least. It also provides information about the origin of everything. These are some of the astronomy events happening in 2016 that you might want to catch.

1. Earth Is About To Pass Through The Tail Of Halley’s Comet, Giving Us A Month Of Meteor Showers

The Eta Aquarids will start around April 20 and will continue right up until May 21. The best time to view them will be in the small hours between May 5 and 7, when the sky will be the darkest during the new Moon.

2. Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn Are About To Align

This month will see a passing moment where Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn – the five planets visible from Earth by the naked eye – will appear in a line from the horizon to the Moon. The alignment of these five earthly neighbors will be visible from Wednesday, January 20 to Saturday, February 20, 2016.

3. Ninth planet may have been discovered, researchers say

Not exactly an astronomy event but not very far. You might have a replacement, Pluto. There could be another planet in our solar system. Researchers at the California Institute of Technology have found evidence in the outer solar system of an object that could be a real ninth planet. Nicknamed Planet Nine, it “has a mass about 10 times that of Earth and orbits about 20 times farther from the sun” than Neptune. That means “it would take this new planet between 10,000 and 20,000 years to make just one full orbit around the sun,” according to Caltech.

4. Transit of Mercury

This will be the highlight of 2016 for many amateur astronomers. The elusive Mercury, one of the most difficult planets to view, will be out in broad daylight—literally! Look through a telescope equipped with a suitable solar filter and you’ll be able to view tiny Mercury transit across the surface of the Sun. This rare celestial event will be visible throughout much of the world, but observers along the eastern coasts of the Americas will get the best view.

5. July 4 2016 – Juno arrives at Jupiter

Back in 2011, NASA launched the spacecraft Juno to study Jupiter’s polar region. On Independence Day, Juno will complete its five-year journey and begin its important work. Take a look at Jupiter in your telescope and imagine what Juno’s first encounter with Jupiter must be like.

Source: cnn.com, iflscience.com, wikipedia.org, telescopes.com