AstroCal – February 2025
AstroCal – February 2025
February 1 finds us 41 days away from the shortest daylight / longest night we experience on the December 21 Winter Solstice. Temperatures and weather patterns lag behind the official onset of winter that begins when we have the least amount of sunshine falling on our latitude. The Earth takes time to cool and then to warm up so the beginning of our cold winter and hot summer weather happens about a month after the winter and summer solstices occur. This is normal and even though we will have only gained back 22 percent of our lost daylight hours by February 1, even the harshest winter weather seems less daunting when we have more daylight in which to enjoy it. We had our week of brutal cold the third week of January and the long range forecast promises some milder temperatures to help us get out and play in the snow more comfortably. Seven scant weeks from the beginning of February and we will already be at the Equinox when night and day strike a 12 hour balance all across the globe.
We begin the month with the First Crescent Moon in the western sky having just passed perigee (closest point) at 228,327 miles from the Earth on Feb 1. Venus and the Crescent Moon will pass very near each other on Feb 1, followed by the First Quarter (Feb 5), Full Moon (Feb 12), Third Quarter (Feb 20), and finally the New Moon (Feb 27). Lunar apogee (the farthest point from Earth) of 251,582 miles will occur on Feb 17.
Look for four planets in the evening sky at the start of February. Mars can be found in the east near the twin stars Castor and Pollux of Gemini and the planet will form a nearly perfect isosceles triangle with them on Feb 20 & 21. Mars will be in retrograde motion (moving backwards against the background stars) until Feb 24 and the distance between the Red Planet and Earth will increase from 63,960,000 miles on Feb 1 to 80,160,000 miles by Feb 28.
Jupiter will be easy to spot high in the southern sky just north of the star Aldebaran in the constellation of Taurus, the Bull. Jupiter’s retrograde motion will end on Feb 4 and it will resume its slow eastward motion. Jupiter’s magnitude during February will be -2.4 to -2.8. Shining at its greatest magnitude of -4.9 on Feb 18-19, Venus will be hard to miss in the western sky. Utilizing binoculars, it will be possible to see the waning crescent of Venus during February. It starts the month at 37 percent and then slims down to 15 percent crescent by month’s end. The crescent will be shrinking, but the angular size of the planet will actually increase from 33 arcseconds to 49 arcseconds. When Venus and the Crescent Moon pass near each other on Feb 1, 8th magnitude Neptune will be just below the Moon.
Throughout the month, look for Saturn below Venus. The Rings of Saturn will be tipped 2 degrees from edgewise with us ‘crossing’ the Rings in March. It would be interesting to see the Rings ‘disappear’ from view. Unfortunately, Saturn will be too close to the Sun for us to observe this phenomenon. Mercury will join the evening planets around Feb 20. Look for it 1.6 degrees to the right of Saturn on Feb 24. Uranus, at mag +5.8, can be seen with binoculars 8 degrees SW of the Pleiades open star cluster in Taurus. With a little searching, it will be possible to see all eight planets on Feb 24 arranged west to east, they would be Mercury, Saturn, Neptune, Venus, Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars (look down to see Earth). Five of these planets will span 116 degrees of the sky 35 minutes after sunset on Feb 28.
Speaking of the Rings of Saturn disappearing, we can go back to the year 1669 for our historical astronomic event. Observing the Rings in 1665, Christian Huygens watched the appendages (he first described what he saw extending from the sides of the planet as ‘ears’) disappear only to reappear several years later. Huygens finally realized what he was observing was a system of Rings around the planet that could not be seen when viewed edge-on. This is an appropriate historical event to mark with the Ringed Planet about to perform this little disappearing act again in the next month.
Compiled by Ken Raisanen of WOAS-FM 91.5 – information provided by Abrams Planetarium Sky Calendar, Michigan State University. More information and subscription information can be found on their website at http://abramsplanetarium.org/skycalendar/ or on Twitter at http://twitter.com/AbramsSkyNotes. Yearly subscriptions cost $12 and can be started anytime. Comments and questions can be emailed to kraisanen@oasd.k12.mi.us
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