During these warm February evenings, the summer Milky Way is visible directly overhead, running north-south across the sky. The evening sky is resplendent with many brilliant stars. From Capella in the north to the Pointers in the south, the sky is a sheer delight to explore.

Just to scan this area with binoculars is like taking a walk along a road of glittering stardust.
The two brightest stars in the night sky are easily seen at this time of the year. Look straight up when it gets properly dark, and you’ll be greeted by Sirius, the brighter of the two, high in the northern sky. Now, turn around and look high in the south. You’ll be greeted by Canopus, the second brightest star.
Canopus is the brightest star of Carina. The constellation represents the bulk of the Argo, the ship that carried Jason and the Argonauts on their adventures.
Although the star Canopus looks only about half as bright as Sirius, that’s only because of its greater distance. It’s more than 300 light-years away, compared to nine light-years for Sirius. If you lined them up at the same distance, Canopus would shine more than 500 times brighter.
Studies conducted some 30 years ago with an orbiting space telescope helped astronomers to establish its distance accurately, and to compile a better profile for the star. It’s about 8 to 10 times as massive as the Sun, and more than 70 times the Sun’s diameter. The great size tells us that Canopus is nearing the end of its life, so it’s puffed outward. Over the next million years or so it may get even bigger and brighter. And while the star is already a good beacon for interplanetary travel, the extra brilliance would enhance that role.
There’s evidence that Canopus helped people get their bearings for centuries. Canopus helped Polynesian sailors navigate from island to island. It also helped European sailors when they began to journey through the southern hemisphere.
And it’s still a popular beacon today; not for people, but for spacecraft. When NASA began planning missions to the Moon and planets in the 1960s, it needed a star to serve as a handy navigational beacon. Locking on to the star and the Sun would keep a craft on target. Canopus was the obvious choice. Not only is it bright, it’s also well away from the ecliptic; the Sun’s path across the sky. That means there’s always a good separation between Sun and star, so they’re both always in view. And there are no other bright stars or planets around it to confuse the tracking system. Canopus made its debut with the Surveyor missions to the Moon and Mariner missions to the planets. And it still helps guide spacecraft today, on journeys across the solar system and beyond.
Head to the north from Sirius, and you’ll be greeted by a bright blue-white star. Rigel is one of the more impressive stars in our part of the galaxy: It’s the seventh-brightest star in the night sky, it’s many times the size and mass of the Sun, and it’s fated to explode as a supernova.
But a closer look shows that Rigel is even more impressive than it seems. It appears to be a system of at least four stars. The one that’s visible to the eye alone, plus three others that are grouped fairly close together.
The companions include a binary – two stars locked in a tight orbit around each other – plus a third star that’s farther away. All three companions are three to four times the mass of the Sun. That puts them in the top one percent of all stars in the galaxy.
The stars in the binary orbit each other once every 10 days. At the system’s distance of more than 850 light-years, not even the biggest telescopes can see them as individual stars. Instead, astronomers use special instruments to tell them apart. The third star is far enough from the others that it’s easy to see on its own.
This triplet of stars is about a quarter of a light-year from the bright star that’s visible to our eyes alone. At that separation, it would take at least 24,000 years for the bright star and the triplets to orbit each other.
The bright stars in the northern sky, Sirius, Rigel, Betelguese, Procyon, Castor or Pollux cannot compete with the brilliance of the colossus of the solar system, the planet Jupiter, currently ruling over that part of the sky. It rises well before sunset amongst the stars of Gemini, the twins. It’s reflecting sunlight from a whopping distance of 645 million kilometres. Only the Moon and the planet Venus outshine it.
Jupiter is the fifth planet out from the Sun, about five times farther from the Sun than Earth is. At that distance, it takes almost 12 years for the planet to complete a single orbit around the Sun.
Jupiter is like a mini solar system. The Sun’s largest planet has a family of almost a hundred known moons. Most of them are little more than cosmic driftwood - rock and ice no more than a few kilometres wide. But a few rank among the most interesting worlds in the solar system.
The four largest moons are Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto. First sighted by Galileo Galilei at the end of December 1609, they account for more than 99.9 percent of the combined mass of all of Jupiter’s moons. They probably formed along with Jupiter itself, from dust and gas that encircled the newborn planet.
Io is the most volcanically active body in the solar system. It’s covered by hundreds of volcanoes, lakes of molten lava, and other features. The other three big moons appear to have oceans of liquid water buried below their icy crusts. And Europa’s ocean is considered one of the most likely homes for life in the solar system.
Some of Jupiter’s little moons could have formed at the same time as the big guys, then perhaps moved into different orbits. But most of them appear to be the remains of asteroids that Jupiter captured when they wandered close. The asteroids were blasted apart in big collisions, leaving small chunks of ice and rock in orbit around the planet. It’s always fascinating the watch the dance of the four big moons around Jupiter. You can see them change position within a very short time, and occasionally you can watch the shadow of one of the moons as it transits in front of the planet.
Saturn is now lost in the glare of the setting sun. It returns to our evening skies in September, offering a better view of the rings than we’ve seen in the past year.
We calculate distances across the solar system, and with authority proclaim that Jupiter is currently 645 million kilometres away. But do we appreciate that distance? To try and put it in some perspective, imagine that the Sun is represented by a soccer ball in the middle of an oval. Put the ball down and walk ten paces in a straight line. Stick a pin in the ground. The head of the pin stands for the planet Mercury. Take another 9 paces beyond Mercury and put down a peppercorn to represent Venus. Seven paces on, drop another peppercorn for Earth. Twenty five millimetres from Earth, another pinhead represents the Moon. Fourteen more paces to little Mars, then 95 paces to giant Jupiter, a ping-pong ball. Saturn is a marble, a further 112 paces. You’ve now reached the goal posts.
But, how far would you have to walk to reach the nearest star, Proxima Centauri? Pick up another soccer ball to represent it and set off for a walk of about 7000 kilometres to Hong Kong! Enjoy your walk!
The Moon is Full on February 2, at Last Quarter on the 9th, New on the 17th and at First Quarter on February 24.

Happy observing!

(Generated with Stellarium software, v25.3)