A time of wonders and beauty
February is a really good month this year for stargazers, just look up on a clear night and there’s a lot to see. The planets are one of the main things to look for with Mars, Jupiter and Venus being easy to spot, and Neptune, Uranus and Saturn (just about) available if you have a telescope.
Looking to the south east, Mars is an easy planet to spot, fairly bright and it has that famous redish tinge to it. In the south is Jupiter very bright and easy to spot and even a pair of decent binoculars will let you see some of the many moons. One of them, Ganymede is the biggest moon in the solar system. Whilst looking at that area of sky, you’ll find two magnificent star clusters nearby, the Pleiades just above and the Hyades in Taurus just below. Also looking a little further down you’ll find my favourite of all constellations, Orion. There’s so much to see here and I’ve mentioned most of it before, the famous Horse Head Nebula, the belt, star clusters etc etc. The star Betelgeuse is so big, our Sun would look like a pimple alongside it, we also know it will go supernova sometime in one heck of a big bang. It might happen next week, or not for thousands of years but it will be unforgettable for anyone who sees it.
The next easy to find planet is Venus, in the west and so easy to find just after dark. This month is when Venus is at her brightest so you can’t mistake it for anything else. It’s an odd thing but whenever Venus is like this there’s a big rise in silly UFO reports, it makes you wonder about people doesn’t it?
Only one spacecraft has ever landed safely on Venus, a Soviet one decades ago, and what it found was one of the nastiest places for humans ever discovered. The atmosphere is laced with acid, the temperatures are horrendous, and the pressure at the surface is over ninety times the Earths. To give you some perspective on that, a car tyre might have three bars pressure to inflate it, if you stood on Venus you would have ninety two bars pressure squeezing you as the acid dissolved your body and you were roasted at the same time. That’s a far cry from the idyllic place pictured in the Dan Dare comics of my youth. Needless to say, the lander didn’t last very long.
Horrid as the place might be, it is one of the most splendid sights to see in the night sky, and next time you are out with some friends, you can point to Venus, sweep your arm across the sky and point to Jupiter and then Mars, it seems to impress quite a lot of people.
Charles Oates, Vega Baja Astronomy Group.
● To find out more about observing and astronomy why not join our group, email us at vegabaja.astronomygroup@gmail.com to find out more.
