The Evening Sky in February 2024
Jupiter is the ‘evening star’, appearing in the northwest soon after sunset. It sets after midnight at the beginning of the month and around 11 pm at the end. The Moon will be near Jupiter on the 15th. We are moving to the far side of the Sun from Jupiter, hence its slow fall, night to night. It is 780 million km away mid-month.
Sirius and Canopus are the brightest true stars. Sirius, the brightest of all the stars, is north of overhead. Canopus, the second brightest star, is a bit south of overhead. Both stars are white in colour.
Sirius, 'the Dog Star', marks the head of Canis Major the big dog. Sirius is 8.6 light years* away and 30 times brighter than the Sun. A group of stars above and right of it make the dog's hindquarters and tail, upside down. Procyon, in the northeast below Sirius, marks the smaller of the two dogs that follow Orion the hunter across the sky.
Below and left of Sirius are bluish Rigel and orange Betelgeuse, the brightest stars in Orion. Between them is a line of three stars: Orion's belt. To southern hemisphere star watchers, the line of three makes the bottom of 'The Pot'. The handle of The Pot is Orion's sword, a fainter line of stars above the bright three. At its centre is the Orion Nebula; a glowing gas cloud 1300 light years away, seen in binoculars.
Orion's belt points down and left to the orange star Aldebaran. Continuing the line finds the Pleiades or Matariki star cluster. Aldebaran makes one eye of Taurus the bull. It is on one tip of an upside-down V of stars making the face of Taurus. These constellation pictures were thought up by northern hemisphere folk so are upside down to us.
The V-shaped group is called the Hyades cluster. It is 130 light years away. Aldebaran is not a member of the cluster but merely on the line of sight, 65 light years from us. It is a red-giant star 145 times brighter than the sun. The Pleiades/Matariki star cluster is also known as the Seven Sisters and Subaru among many names. The cluster is 440 light years from us. From northern Aotearoa the bright star Capella is on the north skyline. It is 90,000 times brighter than the sun and 3300 light years away.
Crux, the Southern Cross, is in the southeast. Below it are Beta and Alpha Centauri, often called 'The Pointers'. Alpha Centauri is the closest naked-eye star, 4.3 light years away. Beta Centauri is a blue-giant star hundreds of light years away, as are most of the stars in Crux. Canopus is also a very luminous distant star; 13 000 times brighter than the sun and 300 light years away.
The Milky Way is brightest in the southeast toward Crux. It can be traced up the sky, fading where it is nearly overhead. It becomes very faint east, or right, of Orion. The Milky Way is our edgewise view of the galaxy, the pancake of billions of stars of which the sun is just one.
The Clouds of Magellan, LMC and SMC are high in the south sky, easily seen by eye on a dark moonless night. They are two small galaxies about 160 000 and 200 000 light years away.
Three planets are in the dawn sky, all low in the east. Venus is the brilliant ‘morning star’, rising around 5 a.m. Its rising time gets later through the month but stays two hours ahead of sunrise. Venus is leaving us behind and moving to the other side of the Sun. At the beginning of the month Mercury is below and right of Venus. It looks like a bright star but much fainter than Venus. Between Venus and Mercury is Mars, fainter again and reddish coloured. Mercury soon slips down into the dawn twilight as it leaves us behind. We are catching up on Mars, so it moves higher in the dawn, closing the gap with Venus. On the 22nd Mars will be just to the right of Venus. After that it appears above Venus. The Moon will be near Venus on the 8th and above Mercury on the 9th.
*A light year (l.y.) is the distance that light travels in one year: nearly 10 million million km or 10^13 km. Sunlight takes eight minutes to get here; moonlight about one second. Sunlight reaches Neptune, the outermost major planet, in four hours. It takes four years for sunlight to reach the nearest star, Alpha Centauri.
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