February nights offer some of the most beautiful skyscapes of the year. Orion is in the south at nightfall, with Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky, twinkling fiercely below it. The stars of spring slide into better view later in the month. Venus shines highest and brightest for its current Evening-Star appearance, while slightly fainter Jupiter is in view almost all night.
The full Moon of February is known as the Snow Moon, Wolf Moon, or Hunger Moon.
Perigee February 1
Apogee February 17
Moon phases are Central Time
The days are getting longer. Those who live in Seattle, for example, will see almost an hour of daylight more today than on the winter solstice, in December. The difference is smaller at more southerly latitudes; from Dallas, it’s about a half-hour.
For the casual skywatcher, Camelopardalis, the giraffe, is a dud. You need dark skies to see any of its stars. Binoculars, however, reveal some nice sights. One example is the star cluster NGC 1502, which stands high above Polaris, the North Star, about 8 p.m.
There’s a double burst of color in the sky right now. The planet Mars and the star Pollux stand side by side, in the east at nightfall and high in the sky later on. Mars is the brighter of the two, with Pollux to its left. Both of them shine bright orange.
Two of the eight planets of the solar system highlight the western evening sky. Venus is the brilliant Evening Star. Saturn is directly below it. It looks like a fairly bright star, although not nearly as bright as Venus.
Antares, the bright orange star at the heart of the scorpion, stands low in the south-southeast at dawn. Tomorrow, it will be close to the lower left of the crescent Moon.
Orion and Scorpius are on opposite sides of the sky, yet they share a common mythology. They’re separated because one was always trying to kill the other. Orion is in the east and southeast at nightfall, while Scorpius is climbing into the dawn sky.
Our solar system resides inside one of the Milky Way Galaxy’s shorter spiral arms. It’s called the Orion Arm because the stars of Orion are among its brightest members. The arm wraps only about a quarter of the way around the galaxy.
Individually, the stars of Orion’s Belt don’t look that impressive, but their appearance is deceiving. The stars are among the most impressive in the galaxy. They have to be for us to see them at all, because they are about 1,200 light-years away.
Orion is in the east and southeast at nightfall. Its three-star belt extends upward from the horizon. The Orion Nebula, which is a giant stellar nursery, looks like a fuzzy star to the right of the belt. To the ancient Maya, it represented the hearth of creation.
Lepus, the rabbit, is below the feet of Orion the hunter, in the southeast at nightfall. Its brightest star, Arneb, is only about 13 million years old, yet it’s likely to expire within the next million years or so because it’s much more massive than the Sun.
