February Podcast: Planets Amid Winter’s Stars – Sky & Telescope

You’ve no doubt read or heard breathless alerts about some grand alignment of planets during January — and maybe you heard that January 25th was the magic date that shouldn’t be missed.  Well, technically there was a wonderful gathering of planets throughout January in the evening sky — and that planet parade continues during February!

Listen to this month’s Sky Tour episode, and you’ll learn that, after sunset, you’ll easily find Venus in the southwest, Jupiter high up in the south (nearly overhead), and Mars well up in the east. Saturn below Venus and sinking closer to the western horizon day by day. But basically you’ll have plenty of time for the entire month to see these four lovely planets at the same time. And by month’s end this celestial quarter will be joined by Mercury, low in the west near Saturn.

Of course, there are plenty of stars in view as well, but it depends on where you look! Go outside after it’s gotten reasonably dark, around 7 pm, and face west. Apart from Venus, you’re not seeing many obvious stars, are you?

Now make a generous turn to the left and look up. What a difference! Even if you have a lot of light pollution, you’ll see Jupiter, Mars, and a bunch of bright stars. And why is that? In this direction you’re looking outward along the plane of our home galaxy, Milky Way. And it happens that many bright stars are relatively close by on that side of the Milky Way’s disk. The most obvious one, the lowest of the lot down in the southeast, is Sirius. It’s actually the brightest star in the entire nighttime sky and only 8½ light years from Earth.

To the upper right of Sirius is Orion, probably the most distinctive constellation in the northern sky. Near Orion are two lesser-known constellations that you can hunt for this month. One is shown above. Betelgeuse, Sirius, and Procyon form a beautiful equilateral triangle in the sky, known to stargazers as the Winter Triangle. There’s nothing much inside that triangle, as bright stars go, but this is the realm of the constellation Monoceros [muh-NAH-ser-us], the Unicorn.

Your second target is also very close to Orion, and it’s not shown above — intentionally! To learn about it and how to find it, you’ll have to listen to this month’s Sky Tour podcast. It’s a fun and educational 13-minute romp across the cosmos. So download or stream this month’s episode!

Read the full podcast transcript.