AstroCal – February 2024
Has winter finally descended upon us as of February 1, 2024? As this is being written, the first true winter-like weather is finally blanketing the Ontonagon area with enough snow to finally cover the mower lines still visible in neighboring yards. According to Keweenaw Reports, the last time the Copper Country had this little snow in January was back in 1931 – a winter with a decidedly below average snowfall of a little over 90 inches. What a difference a year can make. One only needs to remember that area churches were forced to cancel Christmas Services in 2022 due to a deadly blizzard that brought high winds and heavy snowfall. While the lack of snow has certainly been a downer for the tourist industry, the fleet of snowmobile plying the trails in the last weeks of January gives us hope they can make up for some of the lost revenue.
No matter what the weather is doing as January turns to February, the astronomical events for the month will not be canceled due to continued winter-like weather. We begin this month 41 days past the Winter Solstice meaning we have already gained back almost 23 percent of the daylight hours we were living without in December. Extended daylight hours and milder winter conditions are a sure way to help us get outdoors and avoid the seasonal blahs some experience during the longest nights of early winter. Being a Leap Year, the extra day tacked on to February also means we are starting the month only 50 days away from the Spring Equinox.
Venus and Mars will be visible low in the ESE sky one hour before sunrise. The Abrams Sky Calendar tells us binoculars may be useful for viewing them in the growing light of dawn. While Venus will still be bright (mag -3.9), Mars will be much dimmer (mag +1.3). Venus will continue to sink into the morning sky and soon have a close conjunction with Mars (on Feb 22) and Saturn (March 21). In early February, it may also be possible to see Mercury (mag -0.3) to the lower left of Mars in the bright twilight of morning.
Jupiter starts the evening high in the SW sky and its magnitude will decrease from -2.4 to -2.2 during the month (remember, the lower the number, the brighter the object). Clear cold nights this month make for excellent observing of Jupiter as it crosses the expanse of the sky during the night. Uranus (mag 5.7 to 5.8) will be tougher to locate to the upper left of our nearest Gas Giant, about10 degrees ENE of Jupiter. It may be easier to find by using the 4.3 magnitude star Delta in Aries the Ram. Uranus will be just below Delta Ari and on Feb 15, just to the left of the (almost) First Quarter Moon.
Saturn is the only notable planet in the evening sky at present. It can be seen low in the WSW 40 minutes after sunset. The very Young Crescent Moon will be just below the Ringed Planet on February 10. Saturn will drop from our view on Feb 14 so our observing challenge for this month is to note which date you can last see Saturn before it disappears from view.
The Last Quarter Moon of the old cycle takes place on Feb 2 and the New Moon of the new cycle happens on Feb 9. The First Quarter Moon is slated for Feb16 and the Full Moon will grace our skies on February 24. The Moon will reach its apogee, or farthest distance from the Earth on Feb 25 when it will be 252,470 miles from our home world.
From February 27 to March 10, you may be able to observe the zodiacal light in the west just after the end of evening twilight. According to our friends at Wikipedia, “zodiacal light is a faint glow of diffuse sunlight scattered by interplanetary dust. It is brighter around the Sun and appears in a particularly dark night sky to extend from the Sun’s direction in a roughly triangular shape along the zodiac.”
Our historical event for this month might as center on the origin of this thing we call a Leap Year (also known as an intercalary year or a bissextile year). A leap year is necessary to keep out calendars in step with the Earth’s 365.25 day orbit. Without adjusting for the additional quarter day it takes the Earth to complete one orbit of the Sun, our calendar would slip one day out of sync every four years and an astounding 25 days every century. Intercalating (inserting) and additional leap day corrects the ‘calendar drift’ this physical property of our Solar System would impart on our dating system. A leap year occurs in each year that is evenly divisible by 100, but not by 400.
“The term ‘leap year’ probably comes from the fact that a fixed date in the Gregorian calendar normally advances one day of the week from one year to the next. The day of the week in the 12 months following the leap day (from March 1 through February 18 of the following year) will advance two days, thus ‘leaping’ over one day in the week. Christmas Day of 2023, for example, fell on a Monday while it came on a Sunday in 2022. In 2024, it will ‘leap’ over Tuesday thus putting December 25 on a Wednesday.” Thank you (again) to Wikipedia for the above explanation. Don’t forget that the Summer Olympics and United States Presidential elections also occur in leap years. We remain optimistic that world strife will not unhinge this Olympic cycle (it has happened) and the march of democracy in the United States (a hallmark of our great nation) will continue forward ‘for our children’s children’s children’ (yes, I borrowed this from the Moody Blues).
Compiled by Ken Raisanen of WOAS-FM – information provided by Abrams Planetarium Sky Calendar, Michigan State University. More information and subscription information can be found on their website at http://abramsplanetarium.org/skycalendar/ or on X (formerly Twitter) at http://twitter.com/AbramsSkyNotes. Yearly subscriptions cost $12 and can be started anytime.
Top piece video: Okay, we started talking calendars with this being a leap year and all . . .