Caoimhín's Content

Today, we are going to be taking a look at the night sky for Valentine’s night. With all of the looking ahead to the Parade of Planets at the very end of the month, I have skipped over this reasonably famous date in the middle of the month, which is of course, the 14th of February or Valentine’s Day. People don’t really seem to say Saint Valentine’s Day, at least not anymore, it seems to be just Valentine’s Day most of the time. I do remember being told the story of the Saint Valentine long ago, but of course the modern holiday is more about giving chocolates to loved ones and going out to restaurants. However it is a good night for stargazing and stargazing, of course is a fantastic cheap date, a free date if you do it right.

Looking at the night sky for Valentine’s night, for Cork City, we’ve got Saturn, Venus, Jupiter and Mars, all together and clearly visible just before 7 o’clock. As long as you don’t have too many things in your way down in that western horizon, Saturn is still more visible than it will be once it’s joined by Mercury. Venus is very prominent in the west and of course is named for the goddess of love in ancient mythology, Venus or Aphrodite, depending on Greek or Roman mythology. Venus and Aphrodite are often seen as goddesses of beauty and lust, they’re not always seen as gods of love necessarily, but they often represent love in general. Romantic love, usually the kind of love that gets celebrated on Valentine’s Day, was certainly part of the job that Venus and Aphrodite had. In many stories they represented various different kinds of love of course, even platonic and familial.

Even limited to just our view from the city at sunset, it’s a fantastic time to go looking for stars and planets. Sunset is also often considered quite a romantic time of the evening, and Venus being the evening star on Valentine’s is nice, it’s a nice little thing to point out. Venus may be the first, but it is quickly followed by Jupiter, Mars, with Saturn a little bit fainter and a little bit closer to the sunset, so it is a little bit tougher to see. We’ve also got Orion, and there is a nice story about Orion the hunter. Orion the hunter was friends with Artemis the hunter and the scorpion that we see as the constellation Scorpius was eventually sent to kill Orion. There are a few different versions of the story, some say Gaia sent the scorpion to stop Orion hunting, others say it was Apollo. I do go through it in a previous piece on this website, but it is a nice story and I may go through it again. There is also the story of Perseus and Andromeda, Cassiopeia and Cepheus, which also features Pegasus. That whole story in the sky as well is something of a love story, depending on how you tell it, and I’ve certainly gone through that story before.

We also have Pollux and Castor, alternatively called Apollo and Hercules, who could represent brotherly love. They are two brothers together in the sky, we often call Gemini the twins, but of course, Apollo and Hercules were really half brothers. It is still familial love, another nice thing that we can talk about on Valentine’s. From the city, early in the evening offers the best view, we won’t go too much later. Sunrise on Valentine’s morning, or the morning after, is still a sunrise and it’s going to look great. However there aren’t any planets or anything interesting like that to see. If you’re in the right location, you may be able to catch a comet, I think there is still a comet coming around the Sun if you’re in the right location, but for most people, the sunset is going to provide the more reliable view.

We will of course discuss the view from the countryside. I did get a question in the comments funder a past video about levels of light pollution. I don’t always explicitly say the light level, I just say that I’m going from a smaller city, such as Cork City, to a pristine dark sky. The city light level I go with is roughly Bortle Class 5, a limiting magnitude of roughly 5 and a bit. This is is listed as a suburban sky, but that’s more true to my experience in a small city than the urban transition sky that we get with Bortle Class 7 or the urban level of Class 8. That kind of view is not the view that I get, but for the planets Mars, Jupiter, Venus and Saturn, and for the bright stars like Orion’s Belt, it doesn’t really matter too much. With higher light pollution we lose some of the Square of Pegasus for example, but for the planets, especially for Venus, it doesn’t really matter where you are. You’re going to be able to see Venus at least, even if it’s only Venus, under very high levels of light pollution. A perfect countryside sky is Bortle Class 1, this is no light pollution and a limiting magnitude of 7 or more, mostly limited by our eyes. A perfect sky like this can be hard to get to, but anything around 1, even 2 or 3, that’s going to give you a much better view of the night sky. For bright objects, we don’t need to worry about it too much if we’re looking at the sky at around sunset. Of course it will look nicer if you’re in the countryside, but with the extra glow in the sky, it doesn’t have to be a perfect dark location until you’re staying out past sunset or if you’re looking for fainter things. If you want to take a look at Uranus, a telescope will be required and Neptune’s a bit too low in the sky to observe easily.

Up on Valentine’s we’ve also got the Seven Sisters or the Pleiades, and from the countryside it’s easy to take a look at Orion’s Sword. Pushing a little bit later and getting a little bit darker, we still don’t really get to see much of the Milky Way. You get to see a little bit of the outer arm of the Milky Way there, kind of just under Gemini and above Orion crossing the sky through Cassiopeia down the other side, but it is faint. Where the Milky Way hits the western horizon there are two corners of the Summer Triangle still up, but the rest would be below the horizon and below that would be Scorpius. We’re not going to see much of the core of the Milky Way until sunrise, and sunrise will get in the way.

Pushing a little later the Moon will rise. The Moon is past full, so we’re not going to see it for the early part of Valentine’s Night. If we take a look closer to 4 o’clock in the morning, certainly pretty late, the Moon will be at it’s highest. You will see that it is just past full, it is still a very illuminated Moon at 93 and a half percent illuminated. This is still mostly illuminated, just not full enough to come up in the very earliest part of the evening as the Sun is setting. Continuing ahead to morning time, the darkest we will be able to see the sky is still lit by an almost Full Moon. We can see a little bit of the Milky Way of course, but with the light of the just past Full Moon and the quick approach of the glow of sunrise will mostly blot it out. By the time the top of Sagittarius rises along with the core of the Milky Way, the Sun will be almost up, so we’re not really going to get to see it. That is, for us here in Ireland. For most places in the Northern hemisphere, it’s going to be pretty similar, but of course, not everyone can be with the person they want to be with on Valentine’s Day. Lots of people live in different locations, away from somebody that they would like to celebrate Valentine’s Day with. We are going to head first back into the city sky again, most people live in cities, so to give a realistic view, for most people it’s probably going to be a view from a city sky. We’ll check the countryside again a little bit later, but for now we’re going to head down to the Southern hemisphere.

We’re going to go way down in the Southern hemisphere, I want it to be a dramatic enough difference. We’ll go all the way down to around New Zealand, as far south as the South Island no less. New Zealand is pretty far south, but it’s not as far south as Ireland is north. We’re at just 45 degrees south, pretty far south, anywhere around Australia or South Africa, would be less southern and closer to the equator than this. A lot of maps seem to omit New Zealand, so seeing as it is actually included in the Stellarium location selector, I thought we might as well go to New Zealand and take a look from there.

Immediately things will look very different. We are after going through time zones as well, so we are looking at a different time. Bringing it back to the middle of the day, and the middle of the day in the southern hemisphere means seeing the Sun at its highest in the north. This is always a little disconcerting for me, I’m sure it wouldn’t be too disconcerting in the real sky, but when it says north, when it’s labeled as it is in Stellarium, it seems a little bit strange. We are still looking at the sky for Valentine’s. We’ll move back to Valentine’s Night. The Sun will be setting over in the west and it looks like everything’s running backwards, but that’s only because of the direction in which we’re seeing it, because we’re down on the other side of the planet.

Strangely, I wasn’t able to find Venus where I expected it to be. Jupiter and Mars are visible as expected, and the Moon comes above the horizon while there is still a bit of a glow in the sky, making it easy to trace out where the ecliptic is in the sky. Venus should be just behind a tree in the landscape provided by Stellarium. It’s nice to know that it’s not just our view from here in Ireland that is affected by the trees in this way. Here in the north we are leaving winter and heading into at least spring, having just passed a cross quarter day. Down south, it is just after summertime heading into autumn. Thanks to the angle at which we’re seeing the planets here, Venus is actually lower in the sky for 45 degrees south than we’re seeing it in the sky at a 52 degrees north, but that is just down to the seasons. If the season was actually the same, if we were comparing northern summer to southern summer, then it wouldn’t look so advantageous for us. However, because we’re comparing the different seasons here, the southern hemisphere heading into winter, the northern hemisphere heading into summer, that difference in the seasons does make a big difference to what we see in the sky.

Either way, we’ve still got at least Jupiter and Mars in the sky. We’ve also got the Moon rising with the glow of sunset instead of afterwards thanks to the angle of the ecliptic. We’re seeing it there at 96% full because of the difference in the time zones and also because we’re looking at the Moon here at a different time of the night. As it is only a little bit after sunset, you might get to see a little bit of that kind of orangey yellow glow. From the Southern Hemisphere, the Moon does look upside down compared to what we’re used to in the Northern Hemisphere, but of course the inverse is also true. The Sea of Tranquility is still there to be seen of course, you might just need to tilt your head to make it more recognizable. From the South it seems like Orion is above Mars and Jupiter and of course upside down compared to what we’re used to in our hemisphere here in the north. Pushing a little bit later to get the last of that sunlight out of the sky, and very quickly we’ll head out to that perfect, perfect, pristine dark countryside sky again. We can see that glow of the Milky Way, but it’s still an outer arm of the Milky Way. Thankfully, we can see more of the region close to the core, especially in the morning, as we’re closer to the equator at 45 degrees south than we would be at 52 degrees north.

Also visible are the Magellanic Clouds, the Large Magellanic Cloud and the Small Magellanic Cloud. If you have a telescope and you’re in a dark sky in the Southern Hemisphere they are great astronomical targets. We will take a closer look at some deep sky objects in a future video. You can see the Pleiades are up, but they are way down at the horizon, very different from what we’d be used to in the Northern Hemisphere. I think most importantly, Jupiter and Mars are still there, very clear, very clearly above the horizon. So, if you are in the Northern hemisphere on Valentine’s and you are talking to someone in the southern hemisphere on Valentine’s, as long as the time zones aren’t too different, you’ll be able to look at Jupiter or Mars and be looking at the same planet, even from different sides of our planet. This also works with the Moon and the stars.

I hope you get an opportunity to go stargazing on Valentine’s, and that’s really the highest priority for me, as long as you get out and take a look at the stars, regardless of any of the other motives you might have, I hope you get to see this night sky from either side of the planet. If you enjoyed this piece, please do like it and if you enjoy this kind of content, then please do subscribe to my website and YouTube channel. Hopefully I’ll see you back here next time.