The Ellensburg, WA sky for the week of February 3, 2024

Saturday: Let’s review three important sets of three cats. There’s Josie, Valerie, and Melody of Josie and the Pussycats. Felix, Tom, and Sylvester from old time cartoons. And, if you want to get away from the mind-numbing effects of television, there’s Leo the lion, Leo Minor, and Lynx in the night sky. Leo is by far the most prominent of these three constellations. Its brightest star called Regulus is four fists above the east-southeastern horizon at 10:00 p.m. The backwards question mark-shaped head of Leo is above Regulus and the trapezoid-shaped body is to the left of it. Leo Minor consists of a few dim stars right above Leo. Pretty wimpy. The long dim constellation called Lynx spans from just above Leo Minor to nearly straight overhead. You and fellow stargazers won’t need to wear a long tail or ears on a headband to enjoy these stellar cats.

Sunday: Antares is about a half a fist to the lower left of the moon at 6:30 a.m., about one and a half fists above the south-southeastern horizon.

Monday: Venus is about a fist to the left of the moon at 6:30 a.m., about a half a fist above the southeastern horizon.

Tuesday: It will be a challenge to see because of the soon to be rising Sun. At 6:45 a.m. low on the southeastern horizon, the moon, Mars, and Venus make a small triangle in the sky. The moon is on the lower right, Venus is at the top, and hard to spot Mars is at the lower left.

Wednesday: While the moon takes a break from the night sky by being nearly in line with the Sun, we’ll need to get our observational thrills in another part of the sky and at another time. Saturn is moving towards the Sun in the evening sky so it won’t be visible much longer this season. At 6:00 p.m., Saturn is about a half a fist above the west-southwestern horizon. Jupiter will be visible in the evening sky until April. Tonight, it is five and a half fists above the southern horizon at 6:00 p.m.

Thursday: You can set your watch tonight by carefully observing Caph, the bottom star in the E-shaped Cassiopeia. It will be due northwest at exactly 8:00 p.m. However, another star in Cassiopeia is causing astronomers to doubt whether or not they can use neutron stars as the most precise known clocks in the universe. Neutron stars have such a precise spin rate that they are used to set super accurate clocks on Earth. In 2013, astronomers using NASA’s Swift x-ray telescope noticed that the neutron star called 1E 2259+586 exhibited a spin glitch that had never been seen before. The spin rate of about eight times a minute decreased by 2.2 millionths of a second. Read more about this at http://goo.gl/C4V8R1. In 2016, astronomers using NASA’s Swift x-ray telescope observed the slowest rotating neutron star, once every 6.5 hours. What is it with using a telescope named Swift to make discoveries about something slowing? Maybe that slow developing question will be answered at https://tinyurl.com/y6ag6g7c. 

Friday: At 9:45 p.m., the blue giant star called Adhara is one and a half fists above due south. It is the 22nd brightest star in the sky. Currently over 430 light years away, Adhara was only 34 light years away five million years ago. That proximity made it the brightest star in the nighttime sky at the time.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week. For up to date information about the night sky, go to https://nightsky.jpl.nasa.gov/planner.cfm.