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Skywatch for the week of FFebruart 3, 2025

Skywatch Monday 2-3-2025.mp3

Mon Feb 3, 2025 NAME THAT CONSTELLATION – FEBRUARY

Can you identify the 14th largest constellation? It is bordered on the north by Pegasus, Andromeda, Triangulum and Aries the Ram; on the south by Aquarius the Water Carrier and Cetus the Whale; on the west by Pegasus and Aquarius again; and on the east by Triangulum, Aries and Cetus again. There are no bright stars in it, but tonight the waxing crescent moon and the planet Venus can be found within its borders, while the planet Saturn lies below it on the border of the constellation Aquarius. This mythological figure is said to represent the goddess Venus and her son Cupid, who transformed themselves in order to swim away from a dangerous dragon. Can you name this star figure, the twelfth constellation of the zodiac? And of course the answer is Pisces, the Fish, well-placed in the southwestern sky after sunset.

 

Skywatch Tuesday 2-4-2025.mp3

Tue Feb 4, 2025 GROUNDHOG’S DAY

This past Sunday was Candlemass Day, which marks the midpoint of winter. Seasonal beginnings are called quarter days, since they divide the year into four quarters, which made February 2nd a cross-quarter day. Now there’s an old saying, “If Candlemass be fair and bright, Come Winter, have another flight; if Candlemass brings clouds and rain, Go, Winter and come not again.” So oddly, sunny weather is bad, but cloudy weather is a good harbinger. From this comes our observance of Groundhog's Day. Folklore says, if a groundhog casts a shadow on this day, we get six more weeks of winter. Which of course is untrue, because winter does not officially end until March 20 at 5:01 am Eastern Daylight Savings Time, when the sun's rays fall most directly on the earth's equator. Anything else you hear is just a lot of groundhogwash.

 

Skywatch Wednesday 2-5-2025.mp3

Wed Feb 5, 2025 KEPLER THE HITCHIKER

On February 4th, 1600, a poor math teacher from the town of Gratz was dropped off in front of the home of a wealthy nobleman. Johannes Kepler had hitched a ride with Baron Hoffman, Councilor to Rudolph the Second, Emperor of Bohemia. Kepler had been invited by the astronomer Tycho Brahe to work with him at his observatory in the Castle of Benatek outside Prague. Brahe was also a nobleman who had been kicked out of his island observatory in Denmark. Before that happened, though, he had amassed a lot of really good observations of star and planet positions. Kepler stayed with Brahe for about a year and a half. Then in October of 1601 Brahe died and Kepler acquired his observations. The data collected on the planet Mars enabled him to discover the elliptical nature of its orbit. And all this from a shared carriage ride that ended 425 years ago.

 

Skywatch Thursday 2-7-2025.mp3

Thu Feb 6, 2025 MOON AND JUPITER TOGETHER

You can find the new gibbous moon this evening high in the sky after sunset. Nearby it tonight there is a bright, star-like object – the planet Jupiter. Both are within the borders of the constellation Taurus the Bull, and on the other side of Jupiter you’ll find the bullseye, the star Aldebaran. Conjunctions like this are fairly common: once a month, the moon in its orbit of the earth makes a complete circuit of the sky. So the moon and Jupiter will appear together again next month. But even though it’s not rare, when you see the moon next to a bright planet like Jupiter, it’s always very pretty! The closeness of the two is an illusion of course: the moon is currently 228,695 miles away from us, while Jupiter is hundreds of millions of miles farther out, and Aldebaran is a little under 400,000 trillion miles away!

 

Skywatch Friday 2-7-2025.mp3

Fri Feb 7, 2025 CLYDE TOMBAUGH

Clyde Tombaugh, born on February 4th, 1906, was just 24 years old in 1930, when he discovered a planet beyond Neptune, dubbed Planet X. He found it on one of thousands of photographs of starfields, in Gemini the Twins. This constellation is visible in the east after sunset tonight, but Planet X has since wandered off into the other half of the sky, and can now be found along the eastern border of the constellation Sagittarius. After Tombaugh’s discovery, Planet X was given the name Pluto - in mythology, the brother of Jupiter and god of the far-flung underworld. Tombaugh died in 1997. In 2006, the New Horizons probe was launched to Pluto. New Horizons reached Pluto in July 2015 and sent back incredible pictures of this distant world, as well as its five moons.