Please set your alarm and come enjoy the moon and three planets together!

February 2, 2024: February's three bright planets, the Moon.

February 2, 2024: Observe February's three bright planets and the moon at night.

July 6, 2020: The bright Moon is 3.2° lower left of Saturn and 6.4° left of bright Jupiter, which is 6.3° away from Saturn.

In Chicago, Illinois, sunrise is 7:03 AM CST and sunset is 5:07 PM CST. For other cities, consult local sources for sunrise and sunset times, which are calculated by the Naval Observatory's MICA computer program.

Morning sky

Morning Moon

Chart captions - February 2, 2024: During the morning twilight hours, the Moon is in the southern sky near the star Desmos. The Moon rises after midnight, signaling the start of a new day. In the hour before daybreak, the Moon is 55% bright and is located about 30° high in the southern hemisphere. At 5:18 p.m. that day, when the Moon is below the horizon of the Americas, the Moon will be in its last quarter phase.

This morning, the Moon is close to the claws of Scorpius, 8.0° from the southern pincer. Antares, on the forehead of Scorpius, is more than 20° east of the Moon, and on February 4, for skywatchers in Southeast Asia and Indonesia, the Moon may eclipse Antares, the brightest star in Scorpius.

Venus

Chart captions - Venus is low in the southeast before daybreak on February 2, 2024. 45 minutes before daybreak, bright Venus is less than 10° above the southeast horizon, passing by Aldebaran in Sagittarius. Use binoculars to observe the star 4.0° to the lower right of the morning star.

Related knowledge

Venus is the second planet from the Sun. It has the densest atmosphere of any rocky body in the Solar System, so dense that it is a supercritical fluid both at the surface and in its 92 atmospheric layers. The surface of Venus is dominated by volcanoes - there are 167 volcanoes on Venus that are larger than 100 km (60 mi) in diameter. Venus has a diameter roughly equal to that of Earth, at 12,104 km (7,521 mi), and is classified as a terrestrial planet.

Mercury and Mars

Mercury faces the morning twilight, rising above the horizon 47 minutes before sunrise, while Mars continues to rise above the morning twilight, 16 minutes ahead of Mercury.

About 45 minutes before dawn, the brown-red planet is about 4 degrees above the horizon, visible through a telescope but not high enough to be seen with the naked eye.

Jupiter in the night sky

Chart title - February 2, 2024.

Jupiter is high in the south to southwest after sunset, Jupiter and Saturn are the brightest planets in the night sky. The Jovian giant will be high in the south to southwest about an hour after sunset. It will slowly pass eastward in front of the constellation Aries, approaching an imaginary line from Alpha Centauri (the brightest star in Aries) to Astrophotia (part of Cetus). Jupiter sets on the western to northwestern horizon after midnight, heralding the start of a new calendar day.

Related knowledge

Jupiter is the fifth and largest planet from the Sun. It is a gas giant with a mass more than 2.5 times that of all the other planets in the Solar System combined, but still slightly less than one thousandth of the mass of the Sun. Jupiter orbits the Sun at 5.2 AU (or 778.5 million km) with an orbital period of 11.86 years. Jupiter is the third brightest natural object in the night sky after the Moon and Venus, and has been observable since prehistoric times. Jupiter is named after Jupiter, a major deity in ancient Roman mythology.

Jupiter was the first planet to form in the Solar System, and its migration toward the Sun during the early Solar System's formation profoundly influenced the formation history of the other planets. Jupiter is composed primarily of hydrogen (90% by volume), with a smaller fraction of 25% by mass and 10% by volume. Jupiter generates more heat from its collapsing interior than it receives from the Sun. Jupiter's interior consists of an outer mantle of liquid metallic hydrogen and a denser, diffuse inner core. Because of Jupiter's extremely rapid rotation rate of once every ten hours, Jupiter has a slight but noticeable bulge at its equator. Jupiter's outer atmosphere is structured into a series of latitudinal bands, with turbulence and storms at the boundaries of each band. The most obvious example of this phenomenon is the Great Red Spot, a large, easily detectable storm since 1831 or earlier.

Saturn

Star map description--February 2, 2024: After nightfall, Saturn is located in the low and west southwest sky.

Saturn begins to enter a brighter evening. At this time, Saturn is about 10 degrees west-southwest of the horizon. Two hours after nightfall.

The Moon rises about the same time Jupiter sets. Before dawn, a thick crescent Moon can be seen in the southern sky to the lower left of Zubenulgenubi.

Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second largest planet in the Solar System after Jupiter. It is a gas giant with an average radius of about 9.5 times that of Earth. [26][27] Its average density is one-eighth that of Earth, but its mass is more than 95 times that of Earth.

Saturn's interior is generally thought to consist of a rocky core surrounded by a deep layer of metallic hydrogen, a middle layer of liquid hydrogen and helium, and finally a shallow layer of gas. Saturn has a dull yellow hue due to ammonia crystals in its upper atmosphere. Electric currents within the metallic hydrogen layer are thought to generate Saturn's planetary magnetic field, which is weaker than Earth's, but due to its greater size, Saturn's magnetic moment is 580 times that of Earth. Saturn's magnetic field is about one twentieth as strong as Jupiter's. [31] The outer atmosphere is generally bland and lacks contrast, although it has long-lived features. Winds on Saturn can reach speeds of up to 1,800 kilometers per hour (1,100 miles per hour).

The planet has a prominent ring system composed mostly of icy particles, with smaller amounts of rocky debris and dust. At least 146 moons are known to orbit the planet,[32] of which 63 have been formally named; this does not include the hundreds of smaller moons in the rings. Titan is the largest moon of Saturn and the second largest in the Solar System. It is larger (but less massive) than Mercury and is the only moon in the Solar System to have an atmosphere.[33]

BY: Jeffrey L. Hunt

FY：Astronomical volunteer team

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