In the Sky This Month

Summer is months away, but the season’s best-known star pattern is already peeking into view in the pre-dawn sky. The Summer Triangle, which is marked by the stars Vega, Deneb, and Altair, stands well up in the east at first light.

March comes in like a lion as Leo springs across the sky. It crouches low in the east at nightfall and leaps high overhead later on. Its brightest star, Regulus, is at the bottom of the hook-shaped pattern of stars that outlines Leo’s head and mane.

The Moon is at first quarter at 1:57 p.m. CST today as it aligns at a right angle to the line between Earth and the Sun. Sunlight illuminates half of the lunar hemisphere that faces our way.

Aldebaran, the bright orange star that marks the eye of Taurus, the bull, stands to the upper left of the Moon this evening, and to the lower right of the Moon tomorrow night.

Today is Leap Day, which is added to (almost) every fourth February to keep the calendar in sync with the seasons. It was first added by Julius Caesar. Pope Gregory XIII ordered that one Leap Day be dropped every 400 years to fine-tune the calendar.

The Pleiades star cluster shines throughout the evening. It looks like a tiny dipper-shaped pattern of stars and stands high overhead at nightfall. It represents the shoulder of Taurus, the bull.

The planet Venus is in great view. It’s the “evening star,” so it is the brightest object in the night sky other than the Moon. It is close to the right of the Moon tonight. It shines so brightly in part because it is blanketed by brilliant clouds.

NGC 246, the Skull Nebula, is about 1,600 light-years away. At nightfall it’s just above the horizon, to the lower left of the line formed by the Moon and Venus, the “evening star.” The nebula contains gas and dust expelled by a dying star.

Orion is part of a big stellar story. Two of his hunting dogs, Canis Major and Canis Minor, follow him across the sky, pursuing Lepus, the rabbit, below Orion’s feet. The hunter was killed by the scorpion, which is halfway around the sky from Orion.

Eridanus, the river, meanders through the evening sky at this time of year. The constellation winds across a large section of the southwestern sky. Ancient Egyptians considered this star pattern a heavenly version of the Nile.