Caoimhín's Content

Not only is February the shortest month, but this year it also doesn’t have any particularly prominent events. We don’t have any particularly great meteor showers, comets, or eclipses. However, the sky is still changing as always. Saturn is leaving our sky as mentioned in the recent video where we took a look at the view from the planet (that’s right, from, not of). Venus is leaving our morning sky, and the Moon will look smaller when it’s full. Plenty to talk about, even if they are losses rather than gains.

Luckily, to cheer you up a bit, there will be a live show just before February starts! This Sunday, the 28th of January, at 7:30 in the Friary, just at the bottom of Shandon Street in Cork City! If you enjoy my videos and this kind of astronomical content, feel free to pop in and enjoy the show.

Let’s get ahead of ourselves, back into February. Early in the month, as the Sun sets, Saturn is still visible, but even by the middle of the month Saturn’s below the horizon very soon after sunset and by the end of the month we won’t see it at all. Not only is the Earth shifting around the Sun, putting Saturn on the far side of it, but the days are also getting long. Due to the Earth’s tilt, the Northern hemisphere is now starting to come around to facing the Sun, meaning that the Sun will set later and block out Saturn for longer. Jupiter of course will stay with us for much longer, about the first half of the night for most of the month. It is also brighter than Saturn, which helps to keep it appearing for longer.

Later into the evening, we will see those same prominent constellations. Orion is coming up to due South as the sky darkens, Canis Major is also getting very visible just underneath it. Both Gemini and Taurus are still there either side of Orion, and we still have the Pleiades, just there barely visible in a city sky. Another constellation that is up in this are is the lovely pentagon shape of Auriga. As we keep pushing later into the, we have that lovely constellation Leo, which has plenty of galaxies in it as shown in a previous video. As we continue to push up into morning time, the bright star Spica appears under and to the East of Leo. Spica is the brightest star in the constellation of Virgo, however a lot of the rest of Virgo can be a little tricky to spot, espeacially if light pollution is a factor. Though most of the stars are faint, at least Spica is clear, while the constellation of Libra is basically invisible, with no particularly bright stars, but it must be between Virgo and Scorpius even if you can’t see it.

As we approach sunrise, we start to see the Moon coming up. Early in February we’re very close to the New Moon, so we see the Moon quite close to the Sun. The Moon will be is just next to that red star Antares in Scorpius, which makes the constellation of the Scorpion that little bit easier to spot. As mentioned, we still have Venus in the morning for the early part of February, but if we keep pushing into the month Venus will suffer the same fate as Saturn. Venus is moving into a position where it will be invisible from the Earth, at the same time that the sunrises are getting earlier, which also makes Venus harder to spot. The Moon passing close to Antares is one of the close conjunctions you may see as the Moon passes along the ecliptic. Because of the path the Moon takes across the sky there are many close conjunctions between the Moon and particular stars or planets. Given that this close conjunction occurs early in the morning, we’ll see the Moon as a Narrow Crescent, where as at other times of the year you may see a close conjunction between the Full Moon and Antares. This is a particularly nice phenomenon to capture in a photo and is well suited to observing with binoculars.

As we move forward into the month, we’ll get past the New Moon, when the Moon is basically in front of the Sun, and it will return in the evening sky as the Sun sets. By then, Saturn is already leaving the sky as the Moon comes up, so we won’t get to see a close conjunction between the Moon and Saturn. The Moon may have a close conjunction with Jupiter on the other side of the planet, but we don’t see that from Ireland, the Moon will appear to jump from one side of Jupiter to the other. However, just a day or so after the Moon passes Jupiter, it pulls up right underneath the Pleiades on the 16th of February. This is another great thing to take a look at through a pair of binoculars, with the Half Moon and the brighter stars of the Pleiades, the ones often called the Seven Sisters, all visible together in the sky. As it isn’t a Full Moon, the brightness of the reflected light isn’t as much of an issue, and as it is a First Quarter Moon, the Sea of Tranquility will be visible. You may remember from earlier videos that I use the shape of an imaginary football player on the Moon to help find the Sea of Tranquility, you may be able to spot the shape of a head, body, two legs and football on the Moon, and the Sea of Tranquility is the body. As we can only see the brightest stars in the Pleiades here, it forms a shape that is often confused with the Little Dipper, but of course the real Little Dipper is Ursa Minor back with the North Star, and is considerably bigger. However, the shapes are very similar, so it is understandable that people get mix up.

If we keep moving forward the Moon will move through some more famous locations in the sky. As it Leaves Taurus it passes through the bottom of Auriga, then into the heads of Gemini, and then on down into Leo and right next to Regulus, Leo’s brightest star. This brings us to the time of the month when the Moon will be coming up to full. On the night of the 24th, the Moon is at 99.8% full and it will be little more than 400,000 kilometers away. This means the Moon is about as far away from us as it can get when we are both on the same side of the planet, of course it’s a little bit further when it’s on the opposite side of the planet Earth. On the 25th, the Moon will be just a little bit further away again, about a thousand kilometers, but when were talking about things on the scale of hundreds of thousands of kilometers, a thousand kilometers won’t make too much of a difference. Thanks to the Moon’s elliptical orbit, sometimes it’s a little closer to us, other times a little further away. If the Moon is both full and at it’s closest, it’s a Supermoon. On the other hand, if the Moon is full and at it’s furthest from us, it’s a Micromoon, and that’s what were seeing here, the Full Moon in February is a Micromoon! It might seem a little ironic that one of the most interesting things in February is that the Moon is going to be a little fainter, but it is an interesting phenomenon, which doesn’t get nearly as much press as the Supermoon does. The next video will talk more about this phenomenon and also when the next Supermoon is coming up, so you can take some photos and make a comparison.

Moving back in time to the middle of the month, back to the 16th, when the Sun set’s the Moon iss pretty much directly under the Pleiades. However, as the Moon itself orbits around the Earth it will move away from the Pleiades and also as the Earth turns, the Moon and the Pleiades will get closer to the horizon and closer to setting. If you start observing the Moon and the Pleiades early in the eveing, as they both sink down towards the horizon, the Moon will also move away from the Pleiades, pulling ahead of them towards the Hyades and Auriga. Staying up for 6 or so hours can be tricky, but you can also take a break in between. Just make sure to catch them before they actually set into the West!

If we move out into the countryside, we can see that glow of the Milky Way going straight through that pentagonal shape of Auriga. Auriga is a full constellation, not just an asterism, but with the constellation lines shown you can see that it is basically a pentagon. The top of the Horns of the Bull Taurus do collide with the bottom of Auriga, but they’re not the same constellation. The images or pictures representing the constellations make this pretty clear, we can see Auriga their goat, and we can see that Taurus the Bull is just below Auriga, though very close. This does make one of those stars, Elnath, a star that’s shared between two constellations. Elnath is both Beta Tauri and Gamma Aurigae. You might remember from our video on the constellations of Perseus, Andromeda and Pegasus, there is also shared star between Pegasus and Andromeda. If you look into Auriga with a telescope, we’re looking into the Milky Way, so there is plenty to see. There are some particularly nice nebulae, such as the Flaming Star Nebula, which has this lovely red, reddish-pinkish colour, and just next to it is The Tadpole Nebula, which has dark absorption nebulae, a blue-ish reflection nebula and a reddish emission nebula. You can take a look back at my video on deep sky objects to learn more about different types of nebulae.

So that’s a brief introduction to our sky in February, we are going to have another look at February next week, though we’ll concentrate a little bit more on the Moon and a little on meteors, there are always meteors even if there isn’t a shower.

If you enjoy my videos and posts, this is another notice that if you are in Cork City you can come and take a look at one of these shows live in the Friary at the bottom Shandon Street in Cork City, on the 28th, starting at 7:30 and running as long as my voice keeps. I very much hope to see you there if you can make it, and if not I hope you join me here next week for another look at the upcoming sky.