Stars 18th Feb, The Orion Nebula

Above and below, Hubble Pictures of the Orion Nebula

The Orion Nebula, the Trapezium on the lower left.

Scilly Stars Script 18.02.09

This week and for a while yet most of the action is in the dawn sky just before sun up.

Jupiter, Mercury, and Mars are low in the glow of sunrise, where they're changing configuration daily. They start the week with Jupiter and tiny Mars close together well to Mercury's lower left; Mercury moves in on them day by day. Bring binoculars and look just above the east-southeast horizon about 30 minutes before sunup. On the 24th they’ll be all in a nice line in the predawn sky. So on Sunday go out a half hour before sunrise if the sky is clear, look low in the east-southeast with binoculars, and you'll be rewarded with a diagonal line-up of the crescent Moon, Mercury, Jupiter, and maybe even faint Mars, you shouldn’t need one but there’s a diagram on the blog, (see last weeks post).

Venus, still apparently stationary in Pisces) is the dazzling "Evening Star" high in the west during and after twilight. It's at its peak brightness now, and it doesn't set until about 9 p.m. In a telescope Venus is a thick crescent (31% sunlit) about 37 arc seconds from cusp to cusp. But from this week onwards Venus will start to dim as the planet moves away from us toward the other side of the sun.

Saturn is still hanging around near the hind foot of Leo, perhaps still waiting to be kicked. Saturn rises around 7 p.m., shines well up in the east by 9 or 10, and is highest in the south around 1 a.m. Don't confuse it with similarly-bright Regulus (two fist-widths at arm's length) to its upper right after they rise, and more directly to its right in the early-morning hours. Saturn is pale yellow and shines with a steady light, while Regulus is white with a touch of blue and twinkles slightly.

Uranus and Neptune are lost behind the glow of the Sun, and wouldn’t be able to find them anyway.

Now its time to bang on about Orion again. This is the time of year when Orion stands at his highest due south around 7 or 8 p.m. If you look at his sword you should be able to see a fuzzy blob in the centre. This is the Great Orion Nebula which is around 1300 light years from us. Through binoculars or better still a telescope you should be able to resolve the Trapezium, which is a group of hot white young stars, a sort of interstellar rat pack. The ones we can see easily are the brightest of a cluster of up to 2,000 in a 10 light year radius. The Orion Nebula is an example of a massive dust cloud and is in effect a stellar nursery where new stars are being born. Any planets around these stars will have a truly spectacular night scar, but on the down side with so many stars around it would be a little unstable, deadly in fact and to make matters worse you’d be almost 763 million, million miles from the nearest toilet.

That was your night sky for the week ending the 24th February 2009.