What's Up in February: Plenty to see from fading comet to triple conjunction of planets (STA BREAKING NEWS and ARCHIVES)

by Theresa , Sunday, February 01, 2015, 04:30

The month of February is named after Februa, which was the Roman festival of purification. We are now halfway through winter. That point is marked by Groundhog Day on the second of this month. Legend has it that if the groundhog sees its shadow, it will retreat back into its burrow and there will be six more weeks of winter. For us in Maine, there will be six more weeks of winter regardless of this artificial outcome.

There will be several interesting highlights that will be well worth making the effort to observe this month that will give you a much better sense of the dynamic and ever-changing nature of our solar system. These include Jupiter at its best, a slowly fading bright comet arcing through Perseus and Andromeda, a large asteroid crawling through Cancer the Crab, a good chance at seeing a fireball or bolide, and a great triple conjunction of our closest planetary neighbors.

Carefully observing this quintet of very different events and applying it to similar scenarios in our solar system will give you a better appreciation of planetary orbits, the motions and nature of comets and asteroids, and the nature of tiny objects burning up high in our atmosphere.

Jupiter will reach opposition this month on Friday the 6th. That means it will rise at sunset, stay in the sky all night long and not set until sunrise. A superior planet is always at its best and brightest at this point, because it is closest to Earth in its elliptical orbits as it gets exactly opposite Earth from the sun on that day. That happens about every 13 months for all the superior planets except for Mars, which only reaches opposition once every 26 months because it is so much closer to us than the other superior planets.

Jupiter began its retrograde or westward motion in the sky on Dec. 9 of last year and will end its retrograde motion on April 8 this year. The midpoint of this retrograde loop that superior planets appear to trace through the sky is known as it opposition. Since Saturn is well behind Jupiter now, the opposition of Saturn will not happen until May 22 of this year, although it will start its retrograde loop in Libra on March 14.

The King of the Planets shines brilliantly just above and to the right of Regulus, the brightest star in Leo the Lion. Notice that it is still about four times fainter than Venus. Jupiter rotates on its axis in just 10 hours, so you will be able to witness a complete rotation through a telescope and look for its famous red spot and many other nice cloud bands and turbulence features since the planet is visible for 12 hours straight near its opposition.

Another unusual phenomenon to look for this month through a telescope will be several mutual occultations and eclipses of Jupiter’s four large Galilean moons. This is possible because the plane of its moons is edge on to Earth now for a few months. All four of its largest moons will be lined up in order to the east side of Jupiter on the night of its opposition. The order will be Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto. On the night of the 26th, three of its moons will go through four mutual occultations and eclipses.

Just by watching Jupiter and its miniature solar system this month, you will see the results and applications of many laws of physics and be better able to identify with Galileo as he first saw some of these events 406 years ago and used them to prove that Earth can’t be the center of our solar system.

Saturn starts the month rising around 4 a.m. and by the end of February will be rising around 2 a.m. It continues to rise a little earlier each night as it approaches its own opposition on May 22. Notice that the ringed planet is about 80 times fainter than Venus.

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