Tonight's Sky: February

Produced by the Space Telescope Science Institute’s Office of Public Outreach in collaboration with NASA’s Universe of Learning partners: Caltech/IPAC, Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and Sonoma State University.

Musical track The Far River written by John Serrie, from the album And the Stars Go With You, courtesy of New World Music, Ltd. 

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 Text, February. Tonight's sky. Constellations. Stylised drawings of a lion, a bull, and a ram. 

South, 9 PM. Looking up at stars in the night sky. Text, The brightly-starred winter sky beckons on cold clear nights. Orion. The hunter of Greek mythology dominates the heavens with a bright belt of three stars. Lines connect the stars of the constellation, forming the body of a man with one raised arm holding a club and one arm stretched forth holding a shield. Three stars in a row form his belt. A stylized drawing of a helmeted hunter appears laid over the stars. 

The star at Orion's left shoulder shines brightly. Text, Betelgeuse. The hunter's shoulder is marked by the red supergiant Betelgeuse, a massive star nearing the end of its life. 

Zoom in on an image of Betelgeuse from the Hubble Space Telescope, ultraviolet light. A lumpy star, shining, white-hot spot in the center, glowing reddish orange at the edges. Text, Betelgeuse is roughly 1,000 times the size of our sun. An image from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope shows its huge atmosphere with an enormous, mysterious spot glowing brightly in ultraviolet light. 

Hubble's sharp vision allows astronomers to monitor features of the star's atmosphere and better understand how it changes over time. 

On the constellation Orion, the bottom right star glows brightly. Rigel. Text, Marking Orion's foot is another bright-hot supergiant, blue-white Rigel. Massive stars like Rigel lead short, brilliant lives. Below, a point glows dimly near Orion's legs. Orion's Nebula. Text, Below Orion's shining belt lies the Orion Nebula, a hazy spot to the naked eye. A small telescope reveals it to be a diffuse, glowing cloud in space. illuminated by the energy of bright, hot stars in its center. Ground-based view. An image of a gray, starry cloud with a denser center, and more dispersed areas fanning out at the edges. Zoom in on Orion Nebula. An image of a sparkling rainbow nebula cloud, dense and white at the center with reddish, greenish, and purple areas flaming out. Stars scatter across the nebula. Text, Visable and Infrared light. NASA's Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes reveal the nebula in festoons of glowing gas and dust sculpted by the stellar winds of central bright stars. Zoom in on one area of the nebula, a cluster of bright white, blue, and red stars in a pale red cloud. Text, The Orion Nebula is an immense stellar nursery filled with hot, young stars that glow brightly in X-ray light detected by NASA's Chandra X-ray observatory. 

On the Orion constellation, follow the belt of Orion down and left to find blue-white Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky. Shifting down and left across the sky to a constellation with a very bright star at the top. Sirius. The constellation, Canis Major. Lines connecting stars form the image of a dog with four legs and a tail. A styilized drawing appears over the lines of a dog sitting upright with its paws held up. Sirius is at its nose. Text, Sirius lies in the constellation Canis Major, the great dog and companion to Orion. Zoom in on Sirius, a brilliant white star with a blue halo and four rays shining from its center. Text, Hubble Space Telescope visible and infrared light. Sirius is also one of the nearest stars, just 8.6 light-years away, and has a faint white dwarf companion star. A dim point near the bottom left side of Sirius. 

A dim star glows near the dog's heart. Text, M41. Just below Sirius lies a star cluster called M41. It is easily seen with a pair of binoculars as a scattered twinkling. M41 consists of about 100 stars that formed together from a giant cloud of gas and dust. 

Above and left of Sirius is another bright star, a yellowish giant named Procyon. Moving up and left across the night sky to a small constellation of lines connecting a few stars. Canis Minor. Procyon glows at the center. A drawing of a small dog appears over the line. Text, Procyon is part of the constellation Canis Minor, the smaller dog and Orion's second companion. 

Procyon, Sirius, and Betelgeuse form a geometrical pattern called the Winter Triangle. Let the Winter Triangle be your guide to the glories of the winter sky. 

Celestial wonders await you in Tonight's Sky.