Observing Calendar for January – February 2010 by Steve Woodbridge
Sky Diary — By pcburns on January 10, 2010 at 9:49 amObserving Calendar
January 12th to February 8th 2010 (all times GMT)
by Steve Woodbridge
| Date | |
| January 12th | Venus 1 day past superior conjunction. Venus is effectively invisible this period. |
| January 15th | New Moon |
| January 15th | Procyon culminates at midnight. Procyon is the brightest star in Canis Minor. Does anyone know anything interesting to look at it in this consteallation? |
| January 15th | Uranus culminates at sunset in Pisces. Catching its small blue 4” disk is now getting difficult. |
| January 17th | Pollux culminates at midnight. Pollux (with Castor) lead the constellation of Gemini the twins. As well as the bright Messier open cluster M35, it also hosts one Caldwell object – C39 or NGC2392. Usually called the Eskimo nebula, this bright (magnitude 9.2) and small (45”) planetary nebula is well worth a view even in a small telescope. Anyone willing to offer images/sketches? Castor is also a bright white double star with a separation of 2.2” of arc. I have found showing non-astronomers double stars quite fruitful viewing, so bear this one in mind. |
| January 22nd | Moon sets after midnight meaning brighter evening skies |
| January 25th | Saturn rises at 10pm – thus joining Mars and Jupiter as a feasible evening object. The rings are actually closing again as viewed from earth, as the earth moves southward as viewed from Saturn. Over the period their inclination reduces from 4.9° to 4.5°. |
| January 27th | Mercury greatest elongation west. Not a good showing from the UK however, as the planet is only 9° up at dawn. |
| January 28th | The moon occults third magnitude d Geminorum at around 6.45pm. |
| January 29th | Mars at opposition in Cancer. Unfortunately this is an aphelic opposition, so Mars is only 14.1” in size. A small telescope is likely to only show the North Polar cap and a few markings. I want to suggest a small project to monitor the shrinking of the North Polar cap over the next 3 months (when Mars is prominent in the evening sky). The North Pole of Mars is tilted towards us 12-18° over this period and the season goes from early spring to almost the start of the Martian summer (solstice is due May 11th). If there is interest I’ll try to post more details on the website shortly. |
| January 30th | Full Moon. |
| February 4th | Moon rises after midnight meaning dark evening skies again |
| February 9th | Jupiter sets at dusk, drawing to close a pleasing apparition. Last chance this month to sketch/image the belts at a convenient hour until late summer. |
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