February's Skywatching - Planets, The Moon And A Spiral Galaxy - video Dailymotion

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Spot Venus, Mars and Jupiter this month. Spiral galaxy M81 is great skywatching target and find all about the moon.  Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Transcript

00:00 What's up for February?

00:04 Venus and Mars make quite the pair, while Jupiter and the Moon are each other's valentine,

00:10 and observing M81, aka Bode's Galaxy.

00:15 Venus is still a brilliant beacon in the morning, rising in the couple of hours before the Sun.

00:20 It has been sinking lower in the sky for the past couple of months, though, and by the

00:24 end of February it's pretty much getting lost in the light of sunrise.

00:28 It will start making its return as an evening sight in July.

00:31 You can catch the bright planet together with a slim crescent moon on the morning of February

00:36 6, just as the sky starts to brighten.

00:39 Next, Valentine's Day brings a nice pairing to enjoy with someone special.

00:45 That evening look for the crescent moon near Jupiter, high in the southwest following sunset.

00:49 They're just a couple of finger widths apart on the sky, meaning most binoculars will show

00:54 them in the same field of view.

00:56 Speaking of the Moon, NASA's Viper Moon rover is planned to launch later this year,

01:02 and you can send your name to the Moon along with it.

01:05 Visit nasa.gov/sendyournamewithviper for details.

01:10 Returning to the inner planets, as Venus begins its exit, we find Mars returning to view.

01:17 The red planet left the evening sky last September, passing through conjunction, where it was

01:22 on the opposite side of the Sun from Earth and thus not visible for a few months.

01:26 It's now just starting to be visible in the predawn sky.

01:30 In February, it's quite low and not super bright, but you can observe it brightening

01:34 and rising ever earlier in the coming months.

01:37 Those with an unobstructed view toward the southeast horizon can look for a close approach

01:41 of Mars and Venus as the pair are rising during the last week of February.

01:47 February is a good time to view one of the famed Messier objects, known as M81.

01:54 This is a spiral galaxy similar to our own Milky Way, but just a bit smaller, and it's

01:59 one of the brightest galaxies in the night sky.

02:01 It's located about 11.8 million light-years away from us, which means if you're able

02:07 to observe it, those photons of light hitting your eye have been traveling through space

02:11 for more than 11 million years to reach you.

02:15 It was discovered by astronomer Johann Bode in 1774, which is where it gets its other

02:20 common name, Bode's Galaxy.

02:22 At the time, it was simply catalogued as a nebula or faint fuzzy patch.

02:26 It wouldn't be until the work of Edwin Hubble in the 1920s that many such faint fuzzy objects

02:32 were understood to be self-contained galaxies of stars outside the Milky Way and incredibly

02:37 distant from us.

02:38 M81 is a bit too dim to see with the unaided eye, but it's visible with binoculars or

02:44 a small telescope, where it appears as a dim patch of light.

02:48 With a 6-inch telescope, you can resolve the galaxy's bright core, and with an 8-inch

02:52 telescope, you can begin to make out the spiral arms.

02:56 Locating M81 is not too difficult with the Big Dipper or the plow to guide you.

03:02 Starting with the star on the end corner, called Dubé, imagine a line twice the distance

03:06 from the star on the opposite corner of the dipper, Fecta.

03:10 Using your telescope or binoculars in that area ought to put you pretty close to M81.

03:15 You might also notice its faint fuzzy companion nearby, which is M82.

03:20 This is another galaxy but seen edge-on, and it gets its common name, the Cigar Galaxy,

03:25 from this appearance.

03:27 This pair of galaxies is circumpolar in the northern hemisphere, meaning they rotate around

03:32 the north celestial pole and never set.

03:35 Unfortunately, this means they're not really visible from the southern hemisphere.

03:39 Although it's visible all year in the northern hemisphere, from about February through May

03:44 you'll find M81 high in the northern sky in the first half of the night, making it

03:48 easier to observe.

03:50 So grab your telescope or find a local astronomy event with NASA's Night Sky Network and

03:55 check out M81, Bode's Galaxy, a distant cousin to our home galaxy, the Milky Way.

04:03 Here are the phases of the Moon for February.

04:06 Stay up to date on NASA's missions exploring the solar system and beyond at science.nasa.gov.

04:13 I'm Preston Dyches from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and that's What's Up for this

04:17 month.

04:18 [MUSIC]

04:22 [MUSIC]

February's Skywatching - Planets, The Moon And A Spiral Galaxy

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