Planets for breakfast
The sky will be interesting for fans of the wandering stars: get up half an hour earlier in the morning and enjoy Saturn, Jupiter and Mars.
You probably know this too: The view out of the window into the wintry night always finds the same target - the great hunter Orion, who immediately attracts our attention, regardless of whether he crosses the meridian in the evening or closes toward the western horizon at midnight.
On the overview maps you can immediately see that Orion is not wandering alone. He and his friends – Taurus, Carter, Gemini and Big Dog and Little Dog – cannot be overlooked in the sky. Orion, in particular, has a bit of everything: the red supergiant Betelgeuse, which is about twenty times as massive as our Sun. The hot, blue-white supergiant Rigel, on the other hand, has only appeared for less than 100 million years. Mintaka, an intensely hot blue giant in the upper right of Orion's belt, hasn't kept us company for less than 50 million years. But the small "Trapeze", a lightweight telescopic target at the heart of the Orion Nebula M42, outshines them all. His quartet consists of immensely hot stars that may only be "Image" 10,000 years old! alt="
The Orion Nebula itself is a prime example of an emission nebula at 4th magnitude: an expansive cloud of hydrogen gas ionized by the young, hot stars within are embedded, but entire planetary systems. After the planetary dry spell in autumn, the visibility of the five bright planets is improving day by day. They are a great start or end to your observations and leave plenty of time for the nocturnal deep sky.
Planets in January and February
Venus shines boldly at minus 3.9 mag low in the southwest at the first sunset of the year. It made superior conjunction in October and is now still behind the Sun, presenting us with an almost fully illuminated disk. However, it measures only ten arcseconds from pole to pole. At sunset in mid-February it stands a whopping twenty degrees above the south-west horizon and takes more than two hours to set. In the telescope, however, the planet still doesn't look much better. The 11 arc second diameter disk is nearly full, but cloud structure should be barely discernible. Keep an eye out for the Crescent Moon, just a degree and a half separating Venus on February 19.
Mercury finally breaks out of its upper conjunction in the second half of January and then hangs below Venus in the haze of the horizon. The planet is a respectable minus 1st magnitude, but its tiny disk, less than six arcseconds across, isn't a very promising target just yet. In the first days of February it gradually gains altitude above the west-southwest horizon and on the 7th it reaches its greatest angular distance from the sun, the easterly elongation. Then at sunset it is 15 degrees above the horizon, only to dive an hour and a half later. Let Venus guide you: It appears on the upper left, at seven degrees about one binoculars field of view away. If half an hour later the first stars come out like Sadalmelik in Aquarius, you will hardly be able to miss Mercury. It's definitely worth a look through the telescope now. Its disk looks like a miniature first quarter moon. Then, until mid-February, it decreases rapidly, but the height of its crescent grows to almost ten arc seconds, almost matching the dimensions of Venus.
Saturn occupies the best place in the sky: At the beginning of the year it lights up the eastern horizon in Leo (Leo) in the evening. Locate the gold-colored 0 mag planet about five degrees NW of Leo's main star, 1.4 mag bright Regulus (Alpha Leonis). The ringed planet is currently moving backwards – experts call it retrograde – i.e. in the opposite direction compared to the fixed starry sky and thus away from Regulus to the west. It grows progressively larger and brighter as it moves towards the opposition.
It reaches it on February 10th, then rises at sunset and remains visible all night. Saturn is unrivaled in the telescope. Its incomparable rings have been "closing" since 2003. They are currently tilted by 14 degrees, present their south side and appear 45 arc seconds wide. A small telescope shows the broad, bright B ring on the inside, the thinner A ring on the outside and the wafer-thin Cassini ring in between Division. Finally, you can discover five or six of Saturn's 56 known moons. At 8th magnitude, titanium is the brightest and a sure catch in any binocular.
Jupiter appears just before dawn - in time for breakfast. Radiating at minus 1.8 mag, the huge ball of gas is easy to spot in Ophiuchus, a few degrees above 1st mag Scorpio master star Antares (AlphaScorpii).
Mars is a chapter for itself this month. It smolders at only 1.8 mag and is difficult to pick out of the horizon haze twenty degrees east of the Jupiter-Antares tandem. How fitting that Antares, translated Antimars, surpasses him in brightness at this time. If you're struggling to find Mars, the Moon, which is a little further west on January 16 and February 14, will help.
The Moon stands at Elnath, the northern horned star of the bull (Taurus) on New Year's Day. The full moon forms a beautiful motif in Gemini two days later. Discover it between Saturn and Regulus on Epiphany. The mid-month waning crescent can be seen at the triangle of Jupiter, Antares and Mars, helping us find the Red Planet faster.
Two days after the new moon, it is exactly the opposite: Venus is more conspicuous than the thin crescent at dusk on the 20th. Towards the end of January the moon has completed more than one revolution and is in Gemini. Accordingly, February begins in the constellation Cancer and moves one day after full moon, on the night of the 3rd, not half a degree above Saturn. A super motive!
Measured against this, the passing of the trio Jupiter-Antares-Mars is more likely to be posted under the rubric "Location aid for the red planet". The evening twilights of February 18th and 19th are better, when a two- and three-day-old crescent, respectively, rises near Mercury and Venus. Incidentally, on the 18th, the moonset is followed by an occultation of Uranus. If you are planning a trip to Spain or Portugal, don't forget your binoculars!
Those who stayed at home can console themselves with a partial occultation of the Pleiades star cluster: At the change of date to February 24, the moon moves in front of Taygeta and Maya. The spectacle lasts 54 and 48 minutes before the stars reappear on the "sickle side". Meteor showers do occur in January, but the most active of them, the Quadrantids (named after the former constellation Quadrant in what is now the Bear Guardian), reach their maximum on of all days January 3rd when the full moon is high in the sky. Consequently, the "Quads" are pretty washed out this year. © astronomy today
