Astronomy news for the week starting Friday, February 11, 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.
A very quiet week indeed, which, given the
national weather, is not such a bad idea. We do of course have
our ever-present Moon going through its
phases. This week continues the cycle. Beginning with the
Moon just past its first quarter (the night
of Thursday, February 10), it waxes through the gibbous phase to full the night of Thursday the 17th, the phase more
"perfect" closer to Moonset in North America the following morning.
While there are no planetary passages to admire, the late-gibbous
can be found passing south of Castor and Pollux in Gemini, while the full Moon will lie to the south of
the Sickle of Leo and near Regulus, though the stars will
become increasingly difficult to see as the Moon brightens.
Now setting just after 8:30 PM, Jupiter has become an
early-evening object. Look for it in the west shortly after
sundown. But only an hour or so later, up comes Saturn in the east,
followed to the southeast of it by Virgo's Spica. With us
the rest of the night, the ringed planet now crosses the meridian to the south around 3:30 AM. If
you don't mind the chill, Venus
then rises an hour later in the southeast still a good hour
before the beginning of morning's dawn. And if you are a
reasonably early riser, look for it fairly high in southeastern
skies as it becomes lost into bright twilight. All that is left is
to note Neptune's
conjunction with the
Sun the morning of Thursday the 17th.
While the brightness of the growing gibbous Moon quiets the night
sky, making stars more difficult to see, it's still easy in mid-evening to admire
bright Orion, which will be high to the south.
Look especially for the signature three-star
Belt, which the ancient Arabs
appropriately called the "String of Pearls." The constellation is so prominent largely
because, unlike the situation for most celestial figures, many of
its massive young stars are loosely
related and born very roughly at the same time. To see Orion's
centerpiece, use almost any kind of telescope or even binoculars,
and focus in on the middle star of Orion's Sword, which falls to the south from the Belt. The
fuzzy, cloud-like object is the famed Orion Nebula, which marks a recent star-forming region
and a massive young stellar cluster. Once the Moon
clears out of the way, on a dark night you can see the faint winter Milky Way running down the sky to he left
of the great figure.
