Important Celestial Events and February Sky Map

February 09 Evening

Uranus is just 1/3° to the left of Venus.

You'll need to use binocs or a scope to see it .

Fun Fact: Uranus is only 1/9000 as bright  as Venus (it's 5x bigger but 20x farther away)

Planet round up:

Venus is the most brilliant “Evening Star” shining in the southwest during and after dusk. It doesn't set now until a good two hours after dark. Venus will continue to appear a little higher, and stay up a little later, each week all this winter.

Mars rises in the east about 8pm.  Highest in the south about 2 or 3 am. You'll know it to see b/c it really does have a reddish hue.

Jupiter shines high in the south-southwest at dusk, moves lower toward the southwest as evening advances, and sets in the west around 11 or midnight.  If you have binoculars you can keep track of the position of its moons (Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto).  Look at the position of the little tiny dots around it each nite.  You should be able to see 3 of them with binocs.

Here's a link - the black text box in the centre of the webpage shows the moons current positions (little white dots)

http://www.wwu.edu/depts/skywise/jupiter.html

Saturn rises in the east around 11 and is shines highest in the south before dawn

February sky map
http://www.skymaps.com/skymaps/tesmn1202.pdf

Dates of note for the evening sky:

Feb 1st - moon near the Pleiades(great binocular viewing)

Feb 7th - moon near the Beehive cluster (great binocular viewing)

Feb 25th - moon near Venus

Feb 27th - moon near Jupiter

Feb 29th - moon near the Pleiades(great binocular viewing)

Provided by Rosanne Prinsen