The shortest month is a little longer this year, thanks to rules that date back to the time of Julius Caesar. It’s also when we have our best views of winter’s brightest stars and when we ask a large rodent when spring will come.
Will we have a snowy ‘snow moon’?
February begins with the moon waning in the morning sky, with the new moon on the 9th. The moon then returns to the evening sky, waxing to full on the 24th.
February’s full moon is widely known in Northern Hemisphere climes as the snow moon, and it is an appropriate name for many parts of the Lower 48 states where February tends to be the snowiest month. Will that be the case this year? I’ll defer to the Capital Weather Gang on that count.
Other names for this month’s full moon are the hunger moon and storm moon.
Early risers should look for the moon’s slender waning crescent near bright Venus, low in the southeastern sky, about 45 minutes before sunrise on the 7th. The waxing crescent will be near Jupiter on the evening of the 14th.
Will he, or won’t he?
Almost everyone knows that Feb. 2 is Groundhog Day, in which, at various locations around the world, people gather to see if a large indigenous rodent sees its shadow at sunrise. This quaint ritual then indicates whether there will be an early spring. This tradition started among German-speaking people in northern Europe, who developed folklore about badgers emerging from their dens to forage. If the badger saw its shadow, it portended an extended winter. This tradition came to North America with the so-called Pennsylvania Dutch, who replaced the badger with the common woodchuck, or groundhog.
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Groundhog Day marks one of the four “cross-quarter” days in the Celtic calendar, which occur halfway between the seasonal markers of equinoxes and solstices.
A day here, a day there
2024 is a leap year, so February gets one extra day tacked on before the next month ends. Leap days are necessary to keep our calendar more or less in sync with the sun and the dates of the equinoxes and solstices. The problem is that the Earth takes just over 365 days to complete one orbit around the Sun, but that “extra” time rapidly accumulates, throwing a 365-day calendar rapidly out of sync with the sky.
Roman emperor Julius Caesar addressed this problem in the year 46 B.C. by proposing a calendar with an extra day added to February every four years. This produced a calendar year of 365.25 days, but the Earth’s annual trip around the sun took 365.2422 days, making the Julian calendar about 11 minutes longer than the “true” year.
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Our current calendar is based on the reform promoted by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582, which dropped three leap years in a 400-year cycle. This produces a calendar year of 365.2425 days, which is still some 11 seconds longer than the actual year, but the error won’t accumulate to a full day until sometime in the next millennium.
Share this articleShareWinter stars for frosty nights
The evening hours are now dominated by the impressive array of stars that make up the large asterism known as the Great Winter Circle or the Winter Hexagon. The central figure in this group is Orion, the Hunter, who stands high in the south at 9 p.m. as February begins.
Orion is visible from almost every inhabited part of the planet and is awash with myths and legends from just about every culture that has left us written and oral records. Its distinctive outline may be seen from the center of large cities, and under dark skies it’s quite easy to imagine a striding figure holding a club and a shield warding off the charge of nearby Taurus, the Bull.
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Orion is a delight for stargazers of all locations and abilities. From the heart of the city, your unaided eye will show the contrast between the distinctly red-hued Betelgeuse, marking one of Orion’s shoulders, and the icy blue of Rigel marking one of the Hunter’s knees. Orion’s most distinctive feature is the three stars that mark his belt, gleaming like a string of jewels in a nearly perfect line. Use a pair of binoculars to enhance these colors, then look just below the belt stars for another small vertical pattern that marks Orion’s sword.
Even under urban skies, the middle star in the sword grouping has a distinctive, fuzzy glow, and as you venture to darker sites, this glow becomes more apparent. Small telescopes under dark skies will show swirling clouds of glowing gas and mysterious dark rifts surrounding a tight grouping of four stars known as the Trapezium. Known as the Great Orion Nebula, this is a place where stars are forming before our eyes. Most of Orion’s bright stars were formed in this nebula only a few million years ago, and there is enough matter here to birth another 10,000 solar-mass stars.
And then there were two
The planetary parade for February becomes pretty lean as the month progresses as we lose Saturn in the glow of evening twilight. During the first week of February, you may be able to catch a fleeting glimpse of the ringed planet low in the southwestern sky. If you can spot the hairline crescent of the moon half an hour after sunset on the evening of the 10th, Saturn will be just above it. By the end of the month, Saturn will be in conjunction with the sun, returning to the evening skies in the late summer.
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Jupiter still beams down from a high perch early in the month. You should have no trouble spotting the giant planet’s cheery glow as evening twilight fades. If you have a telescope, you have a few hours to view Old Jove before the planet settles westward into more turbulent air. Jupiter sets at about midnight as February begins; by the end of the month it’s gone by 11 p.m.
Venus is also best seen in twilight, but this time it’s in the pre-dawn hours. Venus is currently drifting eastward among the rising stars of the southern summer constellations, traveling along the southernmost reaches of its orbital track around the sky. It is best seen in morning twilight, some 45 minutes before sunrise, low in the southeast. Once you have the dazzling planet in view, try to see how long you can see it after sunrise. Use the waning crescent moon as a guide on the morning of the 7th; Venus will be located a few degrees to the left of the crescent.
Celestial sightings in the D.C. area in February
Yes, it’s cold out there, but there are still places to look through a telescope this month. Here are some suggestions:
- Every Friday (weather permitting) — Visit the Anelamma Society’s observatory at Turner Farm Park in Great Falls, Va.
- Feb. 3 — “Astronomy for Everyone.” Come see the stars from Northern Virginia’s only International Dark Sky Park in Delaplane, Va.
- Feb. 10 — Stargaze at the Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Va.
- Feb. 10 — Public Observing Night with the Northern Virginia Astronomy Club at C.M. Crockett Park, Midland, Va.
For a list of astronomy clubs, planetariums, science centers and observatories in the metro D.C., Baltimore and Richmond areas, see this website from the U.S. Naval Observatory.
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