CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — The new year will bring a pair of lunar eclipses, but don’t expect any sun-disappearing acts like the one that mesmerized North America last spring.
While the world will have to wait until 2026 for the next total solar eclipse, the cosmos promises plenty of other wow moments in 2025. It’s kicking off the year with a 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 sneak peek of what's ahead:
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 cosmic double-header 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.
Three supermoons are on tap this year 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 kilometers). Last year featured four supermoons, wrapping up in November.
Six of our seven neighboring 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.
The sun burped big time last year, painting the sky with gorgeous auroras in unexpected places.
Space weather forecasters anticipate more geomagnetic storms that could yield even more northern and southern lights.
That’s because the sun has reached its solar maximum during its current 11-year cycle that could continue through this year. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Shawn Dahl urges everyone to stay on top of space weather news, so as not to miss any pop-up, razzle-dazzle shows.
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.
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
FILE - The earth's shadow covers the moon during a total lunar eclipse Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2022, in Yokohama near Tokyo. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko, File)
FILE - The northern lights, or aurora borealis, are visible over Lake Washington, in Renton, Wash., on Friday evening, May 10, 2024. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson, File)
FILE - A supermoon rises behind an observation deck in New York City as seen from Hoboken, N.J., Friday, Nov. 15, 2024. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File)
PHOENIX (AP) — From heartbreak and devastation to outrage, Emily Pike's tragic death is stirring heavy emotions and putting the spotlight to a crisis that has long plagued Native American communities, where a disproportionate number of people have been killed or have gone missing.
In the case of the San Carlos Apache teenager, she disappeared from her group home on the edge of a Phoenix suburb in late January.
Authorities posted her picture on social media, saying she was missing and had possibly run away. Just a couple inches shy of 5 feet tall, she was wearing a pink and gray shirt.
It was nearly a month later that sheriff's deputies in a neighboring county reported finding and identifying Pike's remains. It was more than 80 miles (129 kilometers) from where she was last seen.
Since then, news of her brutal death has reverberated through Indian Country and beyond. A crowd gathered Thursday at an intersection in Mesa, near her group home, to honor her life and to press for changes that might help curb the violence.
Dozens of people of all ages viewed the vigil's program on a large inflatable projector. Clad in red, they embraced, shielded candle flames on the windy night and held posters that read “No more stolen sisters” and “Justice for Emily Pike.”
“These tears that are shed are a part of a healing process,” said Mary Kim Titla, a member of the San Carlos Apache Tribe. Titla was wearing pink — Pike's favorite color. She said Pike had dreamed of becoming a veterinarian.
Advocates say the crisis stems from colonization and forced removal, which marginalized Indigenous people by erasing their culture and identity. Limited funding, understaffed police departments and a jurisdictional checkerboard that prevents authorities from working together have only exacerbated the issue.
Pike's case has drawn the attention of hundreds of thousands of people through social media. Some have shared photos of themselves, their mouths covered with a red handprint that has become emblematic of the movement to end the violence. Posts included the hashtags #NoMoreStolenSisters, #SayHerName and #JusticeforEmily.
In Wisconsin, organizers planned for their own candlelight vigil. Fliers in Colorado encouraged people to wear red, and Daisy Bluestar, a Southern Ute tribal member on Colorado's Missing & Murdered Indigenous Relatives Task Force, posted a video about Pike with the hashtag #ColoradoStandsWithYou.
The girl's basketball team at Miami High School in Arizona wore jerseys with “MMIW” and a red handprint on the back.
“We’re all mourning this terrible loss of a precious young girl. Emily really has become everyone’s daughter, granddaughter and niece,” Titla said.
Titla herself has three female relatives who went missing and were killed. She said the community has come together to honor Pike and to demand justice. This shared solidarity comes from a desire for healing from historical and generational trauma, she said.
“It affects so many people," Titla said, “and I think the reason is because we all know someone — it could be a relative, it could be a friend, it could be in our own tribal community.”
Pike's remains were found northeast of Globe, Arizona, the Gila County Sheriffs Office said.
Like many others, her case involves multiple agencies. Gila County is working with Mesa police, the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Mesa police typically don't investigate runaway reports, but the agency did list Pike as missing on its Facebook page two days after the group home reported she was gone.
Arizona's Department of Child Safety requires notification of a child's missing status to occur within a day of receiving the information. However, that requirement doesn't extend to tribal social services, according to Anika Robinson, president of the nonprofit foster care advocacy group ASA Now. Pike was in the custody of San Carlos Apache Tribe Social Services, which could not be reached for comment, at the time she went missing from the group home in Mesa.
Mesa police reported Pike as missing to the National Crime Information Center the evening of Jan. 27. Police have said it would have been up to the group home to contact her case manager who then would have contacted Pike's family or tribe.
The girl's mother, Steff Dosela, has said in interviews that she didn't hear about her daughter’s disappearance until a week later.
Robinson questioned why it took so long. “Imagine what probably had already transpired by that week,” she said.
Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs in 2023 created a task force to identify policies for addressing the high rates of disappearances and killings among the Native American population. A final report is due in 2026.
Washington, New Mexico, Michigan, Wisconsin and Wyoming also have created task forces dedicated to the crisis.
President Donald Trump during his first term created the nation's first task force to begin looking at the problem, dubbing it Operation Lady Liberty. The Biden administration followed with a special unit within the Bureau of Indian Affairs, U.S. attorneys' offices in key areas began taking a closer look at unsolved cases, and top officials held listening sessions across the nation. Just last month, the federal government launched an initiative to help solve missing and unidentified person cases.
Tiffany Jiron, executive director of the Coalition to Stop Violence Against Native Women, said more comprehensive law enforcement training that address jurisdictional challenges, increased funding for tribal programs that provide shelter, mental health resources and legal aid to impacted families and survivors and strengthened alert systems are among the policy solutions that advocates should continue to fight for to address the systemic crisis.
“As an Indigenous people, we are not invisible,” she said. “We deserve just as much attention from law enforcement. Our cases are involving real people, real families, real children.”
People attend a vigil for slain Native American teen Emily Pike in Mesa, Ariz., Thursday, March 6, 2025. (AP Photo/Samantha Chow)
A sign lies on the ground at a vigil for slain Native American teen Emily Pike in Mesa, Ariz., Thursday, March 6, 2025. (AP Photo/Samantha Chow)
People attend a vigil for slain Native American teen Emily Pike in Mesa, Ariz., Thursday, March 6, 2025. (AP Photo/Samantha Chow)
A tribute to slain Native American teen Emily Pike adorns a fence near a vigil in her honor in Mesa, Ariz., Thursday, March 6, 2025. (AP Photo/Samantha Chow)
People attend a vigil for slain Native American teen Emily Pike in Mesa, Ariz., Thursday, March 6, 2025. (AP Photo/Samantha Chow)
