What’s going on for February? This month we will follow the moon to three different points of interest in the winter sky.
First, excitement about the red planet is on the rise as NASA prepares to embark on the latest rover there, called Perseverance, on February 18th.
You will find Mars high in the west after sunset all month. It should be visible throughout the evening, setting around, or shortly after, midnight at local time.
On the night NASA planned to land on Mars, you will find the half-full moon next to the red planet. So go out and take a look with your own eyes – especially if you were one of nearly 11 million people who traveled the names to Mars with Perseverance, scratched into one of three microchips.
Staying with the moon in February, it next moves through a part of the sky that has a familiar pattern of stars, also known as a star. This is the Winter Hexagon – a ring of six bright stars that spans a very wide area of the sky.
In the Winter Circle there are two other distinct groups of stars: Orion the constellation, and another constellation, the Winter Triangle, made up of the bright stars Sirius, Betelgeuse and Procyon.
Like the others, the Summer Triangle, the Winter Circle and the Winter Triangle are the hallmarks of the season.
In the Northern Hemisphere, you see them rising in the east in the early evening during long, cold nights, and setting in the west earlier and earlier as the season turns to spring.
Watch February 20 through 22, as the moon moves over the Winter Circle, becoming a little more complete each evening.
Finally, the moon continues its journey, visiting a Gemini couple. Unlike stars, Gemini is one of the 88 official constella that astronauts use to help them describe the locations of objects in space. The two bright stars Castor and Pollux form the heads of the unstable twins from Roman and Greek folklore for whom the constellation is named.
On the evening of February, Gemini is perched high above them in the south. On February 23 the moon is just below Pollux.
NASA also has a history with Gemini, as that was the name of the human spaceflight program in the 1960s that tested technology and capabilities in preparation for Apollo missions to the moon.
However, although the constellation is pronounced “JEM-in-eye,” not everyone knows that NASA’s program name was commonly referred to as “JEM-ih-knee” within the constellation. space agency.
But you want to pronounce it well. Just make sure you go out and catch the lunar visit with Gemini on February 23rd.
You can catch up on all of NASA’s missions to study the solar system and beyond at www.nasa.gov.
Preston Dyches works for NASA’s Jet Dedication Laboratory.