The Night Sky in February

Most planets continue to be compromised by the glare of the Sun this month, with only bright Jupiter and dim Uranus holding the fort in the evening sky. A waxing crescent Moon sits near Jupiter on the evenings of February 14 and 15, a stunning naked-eye sight if you have clear skies.

As February’s sky darkens, Orion takes centre-stage, due south early evening, followed to the east by the stars of spring. In Orion’s direction, you’re looking along the plane of the Milky Way in the opposition direction to our galaxy’s core. The winter Milky Way is much weaker than that seen during summer, barely visible to the naked eye as it flows down the sky, east of Orion.

With binoculars many fainter stars become visible in the path of the Milky Way, together with a multitude of deep-sky objects including open clusters, nebulae and the remains of extinct stars. As you move further away from the Milky Way’s plane, the constellations appear less vibrant due to a reduced number of bright stars. Although there are still deep-sky objects to be seen, the number of local objects – ones within our own galaxy – reduces to be replaced with those visible outside the Milky Way.

These include globular clusters such as M3, M13, M53 and NGC 5053 which are huge spherical collections of stars in mutual orbit around their common centre-of-mass. Globulars sit in a halo around the centre of a galaxy, orbiting its core. They are local of sorts, but not specifically located within the plane of a spiral galaxy such as the Milky Way. The Beehive cluster M44, a showpiece of the spring sky is a ‘local object’ within our own galaxy

As the amount of light obscuring gas and dust and sheer number of stars reduces at right angles to the galactic plane, other more distant galaxies can be seen. With a few exceptions such as the Andromeda Galaxy M31, most are faint and require optical assistance to see.

While Orion is the banner for the winter night sky, for spring Leo the Lion takes up the mantle. Locate the Plough or Saucepan pattern high above the northeast horizon early evening and extend the line of the two stars adjacent to the saucepan’s handle down and right. Eventually, you should arrive at the bright star Regulus in Leo. Above Regulus is a backwards question mark pattern representing the lion’s head. This has been named “the Sickle”.

The lion’s body extends east (left) of the Sickle as a rectangle, the tail marked by the middle bright star Denebola further east of the body. Now you have the basics of the lion’s outline, imagine where its rear legs would dangle from the star Chertan in the southeast (lower-left) corner of its body. Here sit three small telescope, or large binocular, galaxies called M65, M66 and NGC 3628; the Leo Triplet. These lie at a distance around 35million light years and are interesting because through the eyepiece they all have different and distinctive shapes.

For something more binocular friendly, look at the point roughly one-third the way from Regulus towards red-supergiant Betelgeuse in the northeast (upper-left) corner of Orion. Here you should see the open cluster M67 appearing as a small fuzzy glow.

Finally, head a couple of binocular fields north from M67 to arrive at the much larger open cluster M44, the Beehive. This is a magnificent object through binoculars and one that can just be glimpsed with the naked eye under dark-sky conditions. The Greek astronomer Hipparcos described it as Nephelion or “Little Cloud”: a very apt description for its naked-eye appearance. Both M44 and M67 sit within the dim constellation of Cancer the Crab and are located at distances of 610 and approximately 2,800 light years, respectively.