Sunday, February 5, 2012

Discover February's Celestial Treasures


The month of February brings the winter Milky Way overhead and the big, bright constellation Orion high in the south a couple of hours after sunset. Both brilliant Venus and bright Jupiter are hard to miss in the west, while red Mars peeks above the eastern horizon before 9 p.m.

Binocular users will be rewarded with the Orion Nebula, or M42, faintly glowing to the upper left of the bright star Rigel. Scanning the constellation of Auriga, nearly overhead, will reveal several dim star clusters imbedded in the overall glow of the Milky Way.

Such is our view from Earth...

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Isn't Uranus close to Venus? Where is it?