SkyEye

Welcome to SkyEye, your guide to this month's celestial events.

February 2010

All times and dates are given in Universal Time (UT).
Nightly darkness estimates are calculated for 45° N and 30° S.
Like total solar eclipses, lunar occultation events can be seen only from limited regions on Earth (and sometimes not at all if the occultation takes place during daylight hours). However, the Moon will appear close in the sky to its "target" for some hours either side of the actual occultation, regardless of where you are.

Date		Event
1	Mon
2	Tue
3	Wed
4	Thu
5	Fri	Last Quarter Moon
6	Sat
7	Sun
8	Mon	The waning crescent Moon does not interfere too badly with observing the Alpha Centaurids (theoretical peak activity: from 05:00 UT).
9	Tue
10	Wed
11	Thu
12	Fri
13	Sat	This apogee is the farthest from Earth this year.
14	Sun	New Moon
14	Sun	Neptune at conjunction
15	Mon
16	Tue
17	Wed
18	Thu	4 Vesta at opposition
19	Fri
20	Sat
21	Sun	Moon occults the Pleiades: visible from around 17:50 UT in southern Europe, Africa and the southwestern part of the Arabian penninsula.
22	Mon	First Quarter Moon
23	Tue
24	Wed
25	Thu
26	Fri
27	Sat	Perigee
28	Sun	With perigee occurring only 19 hours before Full Moon, expect high tides.

The Solar System

The word planet is derived from the Greek word for "wanderer." Unlike the background stars, planets seem to move around the sky, keeping mostly to a narrow track called the ecliptic, the path of the Sun across the stars. Dwarf planets and small solar-system bodies including comets, are not so constrained, often moving far above or below the ecliptic.

Sun: Capricornus » Aquarius
Mercury: Sagittarius » Capricornus » Aquarius
The best views of this elusive planet are from the southern hemisphere where it is visible all month in the dawn sky.
Venus: Capricornus » Aquarius
The "evening star" is quite low in the west at sunset but is slowly rising above the horizon as the month progresses.
Mars: Cancer
The red planet was at opposition last month so it is visible most of the night.
4 Vesta: Leo
This small solar system body just reaches naked-eye visibility at opposition on 18 February. It passes near the double star Algieba (gamma Leonis) two days earlier.
Jupiter: Aquarius
The largest planet in the solar system is getting increasingly difficult to observe low in the west as it approaches conjunction on the last day of the month.
Saturn: Virgo
With opposition approaching next month, the ringed planet is rising ever earlier in the evening hours.
Uranus: Pisces
This distant gas giant is approaching conjunction next month and is probably lost in the solar glare.
Neptune: Capricornus
A small telescope is usually necessary to view the most distant planet in the solar system but observations are impossible this month because Neptune is at conjunction on 14 February.

The Celestial Sphere

Constellations are patterns of stars in the sky. The International Astronomical Union (IAU) recognises 88 different constellations. The brightest stars as seen from the Earth are easy to spot but do you know their proper names? With a set of binoculars you can look for fainter objects such as nebulae and galaxies or some of the closest stars to the Sun.

Descriptions of the sky for observers in both the northern and southern hemispheres are available for the following times this month. Subtract one hour from your local time if summer (daylight savings) time is in effect.

Local Time	Northern Hemisphere	Southern Hemisphere
1730 hours (1830 hours summer time)	45° N	30° S
1930 hours (2030 hours summer time)	45° N	30° S
2130 hours (2230 hours summer time)	45° N	30° S
2330 hours (0030 hours summer time)	45° N	30° S
0130 hours (0230 hours summer time)	45° N	30° S
0330 hours (0430 hours summer time)	45° N	30° S
0530 hours (0630 hours summer time)	45° N	30° S

For More Information...

Consult our online glossary for non-technical explanations of many of the astronomical terms used in these pages.
Blue moons, eclipses, the dates of Easter and much more can be found at the Interactive Astronomy Pages.
For more information about the objects and events described in SkyEye, visit these astronomy-related sites.

Credits

Much of this information can be found in this month's issue of your favourite amateur astronomy magazine available in your local bookshop. Another excellent source is the current edition of the Astronomical Calendar by Guy Ottewell and published by the Universal Workshop at Furman University.

The SkyEye banner features a collision of galaxy clusters and is courtesy of NASA, ESA, CXC, M. Bradac (University of California, Santa Barbara) and S. Allen (Stanford University). When MACS J0025.4-1222 was formed, gravity caused the ordinary matter in the colliding galaxy clusters to slow down whereas the dark matter, which at best interacts only weakly with itself, continued on its original course. Thus, this object provides both confirmation of the existence of dark matter and a further understanding of its properties. This image is a composite of Hubble Space Telescope and Chandra X-ray Observatory data where dark matter is coloured blue (mapped by Hubble using gravitational lensing techniques) and ordinary matter is coloured pink (mapped by Chandra detecting X-rays from gas heated by the collision).