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Preston: What's Up for February?
Jupiter makes its exit,
Venus at peak brightness,
and the star-forming cloud next door.
With the departure of Saturn and Venus
over the past two months,
Jupiter is the only bright planet left
in our twilight skies in February, and it's on its way out.
The giant planet stands alone low in the western sky
after sunset in February.
By mid-month, it's setting only about an hour after the Sun.
Once Jupiter departs at the end of February,
the post-sunset sky will be essentially devoid
of naked-eye planets until August
when Saturn will start rising in the east around sunset.
There's a short period though, in April and May,
when you might be able to spot Mercury
as it pops briefly above the horizon.
You'd have to go back four years, to March of 2018,
to find twilight skies with no bright planets.
So, catch Jupiter before it's gone,
and look for it to become a morning planet in April.
[comet whooshing]
Speaking of morning skies,
the Planet Venus will be at its brightest
for the year in February, around mid-month.
It rises with Mars around 4:00 a.m.
and it's visible low in the southeast until sunrise.
Venus is the brightest of all the planets
in our solar system because of the highly reflective clouds
that completely cover its globe,
but its brightness in our skies varies, depending
on how far it is from Earth and on its phase.
Turns out Venus is brightest,
not when it's closest to Earth,
but when it's almost at its closest
and still shows us a large bright crescent phase.
So enjoy the crescent Venus
that is the planet at its brightest,
and look for Venus to form a trio with the Moon and Mars
on the morning of February 26th.
[comet whooshing]
February is a perfect time to enjoy one of the most popular
and well-studied sites in the night sky,
the Great Nebula in Orion.
The Orion Nebula is an enormous cloud of gas and dust,
where thousands of stars are being born.
In fact, it's the nearest large star-forming region
to our solar system and around 1,500 light years away.
The bright central region of the Orion Nebula
is a giant cavity in the cloud
being carved out by the intense ultraviolet light
from a handful of extremely massive young stars.
Finding the Orion Nebula is easy in February
as the Constellation Orion will be high in the south
around eight or 9:00 p.m.
Look for the three stars of the Hunter's Belt
and then find the stars that hang below it,
forming Orion's Sword.
In the center of this line of stars
is one that looks kind of fuzzy.
That's the nebula.
It's visible to the unaided eye under relatively dark skies
and is easily seen with binoculars as a faint haze.
And through a telescope,
it's a sight you'll never forget.
[comet whooshing]
Here are the phases of the Moon for February.
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Stay up to date with all of NASA's missions
to explore the solar system and beyond at nasa.gov.
I'm Preston Dyches from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
and that's What's Up for this month.
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