Scheduled air date: 2002 Feb 04-10
On Valentine's Day evening, a beautiful 2-days-past-New Moon will be visible in
the western sky. The dark portion of the Moon should be faintly visible
due to "Earthshine," sunlight reflected from the Earth to the Moon.
(Inset shows a magnified view of the Moon.)
Betelgeuse, the brightest red star as seen from Earth, reaches its highest point
in the nighttime sky at about 8:15pm on Valentine's Day (February 14).
Betelgeuse is an extremely large star, pulsating in size between about the
equivalent of Mars' orbit, to that of Jupiter's!
If you wish to view illustrations for other episodes, please see our Star Gazer Illustrated directory.
 |
Illustrations on this page were created using
TheSky Astronomy
Software, an advanced desktop planetarium program designed for Windows. Copyright © 1999-2006 by Software Bisque, Inc. |