The main thing happening in the night sky this month is Orion. As soon as it gets dark, he is standing proud and upright in the south. The brightest stars of the entire year are found here and nearby. Blue-white Rigel, reddish Betelgeuse, Bellatrix, Aldebaran, and many others light up the sky. Do not miss Sirius below and to the left of Orion, the brightest star anywhere in the sky.
If you happen to be reading this in the south, way south in the tropics, do not miss the chance to see the second-brightest star in the sky, Canopus. Located below Orion, it is too far south to be seen from Washington. It is in the constellation Carina, the Keel, which is part of a larger constellation, Argo Navis, the ship that Jason and the Argonauts sailed in the prehistoric times of ancient Greece.
Look halfway across the sky to the left to brilliant Jupiter. It is about the brightest thing up there, so it is hard to miss. Notice that it is not twinkling like the stars. That is a dead giveaway that it is a planet. A small telescope will easily show you four of its 72 moons. These were discovered by the famous Galileo. Watch them closely night after night to see them revolve around Jupiter.
On Jan. 6, the planet Venus reached the point in its orbit around the Sun known as Superior Conjunction. At that date it was directly behind the Sun from the Earth, and invisible to us obscured in the Sun’s glare. It marks the time when Venus will cease being an object visible only in the early morning, and we will get to see it early in the evening when we are still awake.
Right now, Venus is just about as far away from us as it can get, so it is moving very slowly through the sky. Look for it low in the west just after sunset above where the Sun went down. If you are lucky, you might see it in late February, but it will be very close to the horizon in the west. If you do not see it, do not give up. Later in March it will be easier to spot as it climbs slowly higher and higher. It will be bright, the brightest thing up there.
The end is nearer
I am always on the lookout for those weird little stories about astronomy that pop up on the internet every now and then. Here is one I thought might be interesting to you. A team of researchers have decided that the universe might end sooner than expected, much, much sooner.
They worked with the ideas of the late physicist Stephen Hawkin and his study of black holes. One amazing thing Hawkin realized about black holes is that they evaporate slowly, very, very slowly over a vast amount of time. This was hard to believe at the time and many of his contemporary colleagues rejected his conclusions. It is easy to imagine dew evaporating under a warm morning sun, but black holes? It is hard to think of something less likely to evaporate than a black hole. If our earth were to fall into one, it would be squeezed down to the size of a pea! They are incredibly heavy, dense and hard.
So the research team decided to expand that idea to everything. Stars, planets, whatever. Think about that for a minute. They are saying that the Earth could evaporate away right beneath our feet!
The time frames are enormous. The original estimate in years to complete evaporation was a number with 1,100 zeros in it. The number the researchers came up with before the universe is gone has only 87 zeros in it. That is trillions of times less than the former number.
Should we be worried about this? I do not think it will be on the ballot in November so do not worry about voting on it. However, if you are working on your bucket list of things you want to do in retirement, you might want to take into consideration that the universe is not going to be around as long as we thought. There may not be time enough to do everything you want to do.
My advice is to go outside and just look at the stars before they all evaporate.
