Astronomy news for the week starting Friday, February 4, 2011.
The evening skies are dominated by the growing
crescent Moon, which spends the week climbing out of western
dusk as it heads toward its first
quarter, the phase reached the night of Thursday, February 10,
around the time of Moonset in North America. During the early part
of the week, while the crescent is slim, watch for Earthlight on the lunar nighttime
side, allowing the whole Moon to be illuminated (as it always is in
the narrow crescent phase). The night of Sunday the 6th, look for
the Moon to
glide several degrees to the right of Jupiter, the pairing making a fine sight. The same
day, the Moon passes its apogee, where it
is farthest from
Earth.
Speaking of Jupiter, it is slowly disappearing, the bright planet
gone from evening skies by 9 PM. Now almost exactly on the celestial equator 2.5 degrees or so to
the east of the Vernal Equinox in
Pisces, it has also now pulled
well (nearly four degrees) to the northeast of much dimmer Uranus, which,
though visible to the naked eye, is still a tough find in our
brightened skies.
The difference in time between Jupiter setting and Saturn rising
has now shrunk to about an hour, the ringed planet coming up in the
east about 10 PM set among the stars of Virgo to the northwest of Spica, where it will hang out for some
time. (On a personal note, that is where I first found the planet
when I was young. I've now watched it go around the Sun twice on
its near-30-year orbit. Jupiter's up to five.) Look for Saturn
due south as it crosses the celestial
meridian about 4 AM.
In the morning, though
Venus is now rising later and dawn is commencing earlier, the
brilliant planet is still very much with us, rising just before
4:30 AM, more than an hour before the sky begins to lighten. It is
so bright that it stays nicely visible in the southeast well into
late twilight. It does however, remain Mars's week, as the red
planet goes through conjunction with the Sun
as we begin our period, on Friday the 4th. But since the
planet almost keeps pace with the faster-moving Earth, don't look
for it in morning skies anytime soon.
Nothing rules the skies quite like Orion, which is now high to the south (at least from
mid-North America) in mid-evening. Up and a bit to the right
stomps Taurus, the celestial
Bull, which connects even farther to the north with Auriga, the Charioteer. The figure
holds bright Capella, the most
northerly first magnitude star, which is so bright (sixth in the
sky after Vega) that it actually
falls into "magnitude zero."
