What’s in the Sky in February

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February

  • 5th Saturn in conjunction with the Sun.
  • 6th Luna lowest altitude 26 degrees North of the Celestial Equator.
  • 11th The Large Magellanic Cloud  (LMC) reaches highest altitude about 9.30pm AEDT at magnitude 0.28. The LMC is a spiral galaxy in Dorado at a distance of 160kly and a diameter of 29.7kly in diameter.  The Tarantula Nebula, NGC 2070 is located in this area and is magnitude 5. it is 1,833ly in diameter. The Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) located nearby is a spiral Galaxy in Tucana and 200kly in distance and 17.5kly in diameter. visual magnitude is 2.29. These two irregular dwarf are members of our local group and are orbiting the Milky Way Galaxy.
  • Kourtchin (Boorong) refer to the Magellanic Clouds as the male (LMC) and female (SMC), brolgas. Each cloud resembles the colour and pitted shell of the brolga egg. Brolgas breed from October to April , when the clouds are at their highest, extending into nearby stars the larger one is trumpeting and the smaller one displaying, but dancing as a pair towards each other.

 

 

  • 11th Saturn, Venus, Mercury and Mars are rising before the Sun.
  • 11th Mercury has joined Saturn, Venus and Jupiter in a quadruple conjunction in the morningg sky.
  • 11th Luna Apogee, furthest distance from Earth for the month 12:38hr AEDT 404,898.3km.
  • 15th Venus a thin crescent, magnitude -4.9 a very bright object in the morning sky, distance 63,656,982km  27.4%illuminated.
  • 26th Luna at it’s highest altitude, 26 degrees South of the Celestial Equator.
  • 27th Moon at Perigee 8:26hrs AEDT, 367,792.0 km.
  • 28th Mars 3 degrees Nth and Venus 8 degrees  Nth of Luna.