StarWatch: Moravian University Astronomy

FEBRUARY 2026

FEBRUARY STAR MAP | MOON PHASE CALENDAR | STARWATCH INDEX | NIGHT SKY NOTEBOOK

lunar phases

1537 FEBRUARY 1, 2026: Groundhog Day: My wife and I have two rescue rabbits as pets: Sagan and Denali. They are both of the Dutch breed. Sagan, the philosopher, will be 11 years old on February 15, which is stretching the lifespan of any lagomorph, but like the Energizer Bunny, he keeps on going and going. We have had much younger Denali for less than two months. In rabbit years, he is just becoming a teenager. His previous owners must have taken very good care of him, for he has made his transition from their care to the Lehigh Valley Humane Society, and now to his new condominium in our home with relative ease. * You might think that there has to be some relationship between rabbits and groundhogs. They are both mammals, have continuously growing front teeth, are herbivores (plant eaters), and burrow. Rabbits will often claim the abandoned tunnels of groundhogs rather than digging one for themselves. Why work when you can play? This is basically Denali's mantra at the present time. Groundhogs, on the other hand, are of the Order Rodentia, members of the squirrel family, and they represent the largest ground squirrels in North America-no hopping from tree to tree for these hefty creatures. Rabbits are lagomorphs, and their closest relatives are hares and pikas. * Easter is Sagan's and Denali's time, a symbol of new life. Rabbits are very prolific; they can breed and have their young at any time of the year. However, another critter is currently getting top billing. It's the slow-moving and even slower-thinking groundhog. They make lagomorphs look like virtual Einsteins, compared to the waddling, fat, inept road-crossing critter who decides whether winter weather is staying or departing. No rodentia should have to live under those kinds of pressures, and indeed, they don't, getting it wrong almost every year. * The badger is the European equivalent, but in America, groundhogs were adopted as the soothsaying creatures that were given this opportunity to excel, only to fail in their forecasts about 61 percent of the time. * It's all about roots, and the fact that groundhogs have the opportunity as they extend their burrows to observe how roots and tubers are maturing, whether they are fattening ahead of schedule, indicating an early spring, or are falling behind in their timetable, which means more winter misery looms ahead. * A highly chatty groundhog named Punxsutawney Phil and others across the country make their predictions on February 2. Phil will speak to his top hat handler in a language known as groundhogese, a word absent from the dictionary, to convey his sentiments about meteorology. Add the sun into the mix, and the process becomes very counterintuitive. If the sun is out and Phil believes that he has seen his shadow, it is back to the den because there will be six more weeks of winter. If Phil's shadow is absent, an early spring is at hand. A groundhog simply cannot remember something so complex, especially when meteorologists have spent years learning about weather and climate patterns and often can't get a forecast correct three days in advance. * Groundhog Day occurs on the first of the four cross-quarter days occurring in a year, the time between a solstice, a high or a low sun, and an equinox, a mid-positioned sun. Still, may it be grey on Groundhog Day, February 2. I'm still looking forward to an early spring. Regardless of Phil's prediction, have a wonderful celebration. Ad Astra!

1538

FEBRUARY 8, 2026: Antiquity's Apex Predator

Standing outside on a cold December evening, I was mindful of Orion, the greatest hunter of all times, staring down at me from the tops of my neighbor's skeletal ash trees. His one arm was raised high above his head, his hand firmly grasping a club, ready to give Taurus the Bull the beating of his life if he approached too closely. The other arm held a shield, composed of the impenetrable skin of the Nemean Lion stretched tightly across it, to protect him against the charging beast's piercing horns. * February marks the best time of the year to view Orion the Hunter just after darkness. Standing straight and tall in the south, he is at the peak of his run across the sky. Orion isn’t just an easy-to-recognize star pattern; it contains some of the best astronomy real estate that the heavens can muster. When I was a graduate assistant at West Chester University, my sponsor, Dr. George F. Reed, had written The Astronomy of One Constellation solely about the diversity of this colorful section of the night sky. * The area around Orion is also positioned in a hydrogen-rich region of the Milky Way, filled with so many luminaries that with binoculars from the Southern Hemisphere, I understood for the first time the concept of star clouds, cumulus-like formations made from tens of thousands of stars. * All of the luminaries that outline his body and reveal his belt are young, less than 12 million years of age. Except for red Betelgeuse, their hearts of fusing gases are beating vigorously, producing a bluish hue on their exteriors, their internal thermonuclear engines pumping out massive quantities of energy, some hundreds of thousands of times the amount that our sun produces each second. They are blue giants and blue supergiants, the superstars of the Main Sequence, which are mainly fusing hydrogen into helium and helium into carbon. * Take for example, the three belt stars of the Hunter: Mintaka, Alnilam, and Alnitak which make Orion’s pattern so distinguishable and which fit so neatly into the field of view of any pair of binoculars. See a map of Orion here. Their luminosity is staggering when compared to the sun. Mintaka (upper right) generates enough energy across the entire electromagnetic spectrum to make it 191,000 times greater than the sun’s luminosity; Alnilam (middle), 271,000 times; and Alnitak, 250,000 times more radiant than Sol. It becomes very understandable why these stars have such short lives. Their energy outputs are staggering, yet their masses (quantity of matter) are only 20 to 40 times the mass of the sun. These stars are burning their candles at both ends and will die in spectacular supernova events. * The belt stars and many others are part of several OB associations in the Orion region. O and B stars are the hottest and most luminous first-generation stars to form in a cluster. Their outpourings of mainly ultraviolet radiation push and compress the hydrogen gas surrounding them, leading to the formation of second-generation, lower-mass stars that complete the cluster's growth. Our sun was a second-generation star that formed in an unnamed stellar grouping that evaporated (dissipated) billions of years ago. The best-known OB association in the Northern Hemisphere is the Orion Nebula, found as the central, fuzzy, star-like object in the sword of the Hunter. Binoculars reveal gossamer wings of expanding gases and dust and a bright spot near the center where some of the youngest stars of our galaxy reside. Estimates place this tightly knit community called the Trapezium between 100,000 and 300,000 years of age. * Finally, two of the four brightest supergiant stars of the heavens also exist in Orion. Red Betelgeuse is nearing the end of its life and has exhausted its supply of hydrogen within its core, possibly its helium as well. The star is more luminous than it has ever been, with hydrogen now burning in a thin shell encompassing its core. Look for it to go supernova in the next million years or so, a blink of an eye in the universe's 13.8 billion-year saga. Catty-corner to Betelgeuse is blue supergiant Rigel, usually the brightest star of the Hunter. Definitely not a slacker, Rigel’s luminosity is about 120,000 times more than our sun. * With the moon rising after midnight, this week’s sky offers a view of the greatest hunter in the heavens in the south right after dark. Orion is looking down on you tonight and will be pleased to know that you are looking up at him. Ad Astra!

Gary A. Becker map created from Software Bisque's, The Sky...

1539 FEBRUARY 15, 2026:

1540 FEBRUARY 22, 2026: