My first Magazine Sky & Telescope - 02.2019 | Page 49

Pisces into Aries at mid-month and has
a close conjunction with Uranus.
On February 12th, look for Uranus
a little more than 1° south of Mars.
Compare the disks of the two in your
telescope. Magnitude-5.8 Uranus is
only about 3½″ wide, and its low-
surface-brightness globe of blue or
green contrasts greatly with the more
intensely lighted and bigger-looking
orange globe of Mars.
December
solstice
Uranus
Mercury
Sun
Jupiter
Neptune
Sept.
equinox
Venus
June
solstice
PRE-DAWN AND DAWN
Jupiter comes up in the southeast
after 3:30 a.m. as February begins but
almost as early as 2 a.m. by month’s
end. Jupiter’s rising breaks the drought
of several hours of having no planets
above the horizon. The king of the plan-
ets burns in Ophiuchus near Scorpius.
Its magnitude improves from –1.9 to
–2.0 this month, and telescopes show
its globe grow from 33½″ to 36″ wide.
Venus rises more than 30 minutes
after Jupiter at the start of February but
is starting to fall back towards our line
of sight with the Sun, while Jupiter’s
elongation from the Sun keeps increas-
Earth
March
equinox
Saturn
Mars
ORBITS OF THE PLANETS
The curved arrows show each planet’s movement during February. The outer planets don’t
change position enough in a month to notice at this scale.
ing. By month’s end Venus comes up
about 2½ hours after Jupiter. Venus dims
from magnitude –4.3 to –4.1 this month
as it races across Sagittarius. Its disk
shrinks from 19″ to 16″ in February, and
its phase increases from 62% to 72%.
Saturn has a close conjunction
with Venus — with just 1° separating
the two — on the American morning
of February 18th. Thus Saturn switches
q These scenes are drawn for near the middle of North America (latitude 40° north, longitude
90° west); European observers should move each Moon symbol a quarter of the way toward
the one for the previous date. In the Far East, move the Moon halfway. The blue 10° scale bar is
about the width of your fi st at arm’s length. For clarity, the Moon is shown three times its actual
apparent size.
places with Venus in the line with
Jupiter. At the start of February Saturn
rises 1½ hours before the Sun and about
85 minutes after Venus. But at month’s
end Saturn precedes the Sun by more
than 2½ hours and Venus by about 40
minutes. Saturn remains at magnitude
+0.6 all month and grows the slightest
in apparent diameter, but its globe is
still less than 16″ wide, similar in size
to the lit part of Venus when they are in
conjunction this month. The glorious
rings now span 35″ wide and are tilted a
generous 24° from horizontal.
MOON PASSAGES
Dusk, Feb 22 Dawn, Feb 26–27
45 minutes after sunset 1 hour before sunrise
Great
Square
Moon
Feb 26
Moon
Feb 27
Jupiter
Antares
SCORPIUS
PISCES
PEGASUS
Circlet
Cat’s Eyes
Mercury
Looking West
Looking South-Southeast
The Moon shines as a slender waning
crescent halfway between Venus and
Saturn at dawn on February 1st and is
3° lower left of Saturn the next day. A
thick waning lunar crescent is 6° lower
left of Mars on the evening of February
10th. The Moon is at perigee (closest
to Earth in space) on the American
morning of February 19th, only about
7 hours before the moment of the full
Moon. The Moon is exactly at last quar-
ter when 8° due north of Antares at the
American dawn of February 26th. The
Moon glows 2½° above Jupiter on Feb-
ruary 27th and almost halfway between
Jupiter and Saturn the next morning.
¢ Contributing Editor FRED SCHAAF
is the author of The 50 Best Sights in
Astronomy and How to See Them, pub-
lished by John Wiley & Sons in 2007.
sk yandtele scope.com • FE B RUA RY 2 019
47