This Week’s Sky at a Glance, 2025 Feb 1 – Feb 8
This Week’s Sky at a Glance, 2025 Feb 1 – Feb 8
“Cold wind on the harbour and rain on the road, wet promise of winter brings recourse to coal.
There’s fire in the blood and a fog on Bras d’Or; the giant will rise with the Moon.”
(Giant, by Stan Rogers)
By the end of the week the constellation Orion, mythological giant son of Poseidon, rises with the waxing gibbous Moon. We won’t see the constellation, of course, until evening twilight dwindles; but watch him become a New York Giant leaping to catch a lunar football.
When the Moon is full or nearly so amateur astronomers can get a little grumpy because the moonlight washes out the faint galaxies, nebulae and comets. But this time of year the waxing gibbous Moon can play a role in some imaginative stargazing. On Friday evening it is above Orion, looking like a football approaching his outstretched right hand. Will he catch it in the end zone and be a hero like Perseus, or miss it and be a goat like Capricornus? With the Moon in Taurus on Thursday and in the feet of Gemini next Saturday, we also have a Chicago Bull passing the ball to a Minnesota Twin for an all-star all-sport soccer game. Is that a lacrosse stick in Orion’s hand?
This Week in the Solar System
Saturday’s sunrise in Moncton is at 7:41 and sunset will occur at 5:24, giving 9 hours, 43 minutes of daylight (7:44 and 5:31 in Saint John). Next Saturday the Sun will rise at 7:32 and set at 5:35, giving 10 hours, 3 minutes of daylight (7:35 and 5:42 in Saint John).
The Moon is at first quarter on Wednesday near the Pleiades star cluster, and it is near Jupiter on Thursday. Saturn sets around 8:30 pm this weekend, one hour before Venus. Jupiter reaches its second stationary point on Tuesday, after which it resumes eastward motion against the stars. Telescope users might see its Red Spot on Monday around 8 pm and Wednesday at 9:30. Mars is slowing its retrograde motion to get a few weeks of rest in the middle of Gemini. Mercury is too close to the Sun for observing.
As part of the Frostival events, the Fredericton astronomy club will host solar observing at the Grant Harvey Centre on Sunday from 2 pm to 3 pm. As part of the Rockwood Park Winterfest, the Saint John Astronomy Club is hosting a telescope clinic and solar observing between 10 am and 2 pm at the Interpretation Centre. The club will have its monthly meeting at that location on February 8 at 7 pm.