February 9
The Glittering Head
Sun Position
The Sun is in Aquarius near +11° declination. Northern mid-latitude days are near 10.5 hours; southern evenings arrive a little earlier each night.
Sky Highlight
No annual shower today. The Lambda Orionis OB association (the loose cluster surrounding Meissa) is one of the few star-forming regions visible to the naked eye, embedded in a faint emission nebula spanning 8° of sky.
Deep Sky Object
M78, a reflection nebula about 1,600 light-years away. The brightest reflection nebula in the sky, in Orion, a bluish cloud of dust that glows only because nearby hot stars illuminate it, not from emission of its own. Visible from both hemispheres wherever Orion is above the horizon.
Featured Star
Meissa (λ Ori) is a blue giant 1,100 light-years away with spectral class O8III, a scorchingly hot star that ionizes the gas around it into the Lambda Orionis ring nebula. The glittering head of Orion sits inside a bubble it blew itself, burning so hot it remakes its own neighborhood.
Around This Date
- February 9, 1986Halley's Comet reached perihelion in its 1986 apparition, its closest point to the Sun during an apparition widely considered disappointing for ground-based observers.
- February 9, 1913The Great Meteor Procession crossed the sky over North America, an unusual display of fireballs traveling together in a slow parallel stream rather than radiating from a single point, witnessed from Canada to Bermuda.
A star so hot it carved its own nebula, some things make their own room.