February 5
The Bleary-Eyed One
Sun Position
The Sun is in Aquarius near +13° declination. Northern hemisphere days are still short but growing; southern days near their late-summer peak.
Sky Highlight
No annual event peaks today. Canis Minor is riding its February transit this week, and both Procyon and Gomeisa are easy to locate in the evening sky.
Deep Sky Object
M47, an open cluster about 1,600 light-years away. A bright, scattered open cluster in Puppis with about 50 stars, easy in binoculars and a fine contrast with the richer M46 just 1.3° away. Visible from both hemispheres; southern observers see it higher in the sky.
Featured Star
Gomeisa (β CMi) is a blue-white main-sequence star 162 light-years away with spectral class B8Ve, the 'e' indicating emission lines from a disk of gas it flings outward as it spins. Dimmer than its neighbor Procyon, it lives up to the Arabic nickname 'the bleary-eyed': harder to see, harder to read.
Around This Date
- February 5, 1783William Herschel read his paper 'On the Proper Motion of the Solar System' to the Royal Society, presenting the first systematic attempt to determine the Sun's movement through space.
- February 7, 1984Astronauts Bruce McCandless and Robert Stewart made the first untethered spacewalk using the Manned Maneuvering Unit during Space Shuttle Challenger mission STS-41-B.
A spinning star with a gas disk of its own making, even the small ones are doing something.