Astroblog: February's Southern Skywatch now up

Wednesday, February 08, 2006

February's Southern Skywatch now up

(click to enlarge image)
Sheesh! A week late! But finally Southern Skywatch is up. The conference and getting ready for the start of semester took its toll. But I got a revised paper back to the lead author today, so I feel good.

So what's up in February? Well, Saturn is close to the Beehive cluster, really good in binoculars (if the sky isn't too murky, like it is tonight). Mars zips past the Pleiades, it's already in the same binocular field as them, and looks pretty good. Crescent Venus is pretty speckky in the morning sky. I'll try and get a shot of that this week.

For southern comet hunters, comet A1 Pojmanski is now magnitude 7.8 and is well placed in Southern skies, near alpha Pavonis, if you don't mind getting up very early in the morning.

Also, there's an occultation of bright Antares on the 22nd. This will be visible from Western and central Australia, Indonesia and Malaysia.

So, it looks like a fun month ahead if the skies can stay clear for a little while.

# posted by Ian Musgrave @ 12:20 am

Comments:

Ian, have you gotten a look at the comet? I'm biding my time and hoping for decent skies, it'll be a few weeks for us up north.

# posted by

Anonymous : 9:08 am

No, sadly it has just got bright enough to see at my site, and the clouds have naturally moved in. I'm listening to the rain as I type (this also messes up my Venu campaign as well)

# posted by