Inspiring Capella and February's Planets

That was a line to a song I came up with about 30 years ago; it rattled around in my head until 1997, when I used it, in a slightly altered form, in a song called "Naked, Like Me."

What this has to do with astronomy isn't simply that Capella was an inspiration, but that it was an apparition. An early evening apparition, in this case.

Capella is one of our brightest stars, not quite magnitude 0, but a smidge brighter than magnitude 1.0. It shines down on us from north circumpolar skies at an in-your-face distance of about 42 light-years. And because it is circumpolar, it can be seen at some time during every night of the year by most of us. It is an apparition ... to me anyway ... on autumn evenings when it rises after sunset. Being one of the brightest stars in the sky, it is thus one of the first to emerge from the dusk light, and if you're not expecting it, it is a surprise. (When you are expecting Mars, as I was then, it is even more of a surprise.)

Capella, the brightest star in the constellation Auriga, is actually a double star. Both stars are about 75 times brighter than our own star, the Sun, and they revolve about each other once every 104 days. (Menkalinen, the second brightest star in Auriga, is also a double, or binary star. These revolve about each other once every 4 days, and because they eclipse each other, Menkalinen appears to vary in brightness.)

During the winter, Capella is high and bright and twinkly; definitely one of the highlights of a frosty February night.

Jupiter and Saturn provide the planetary highlights of the month.

Jupiter, which rises around 10:30 pm local time at the beginning of the month, drifts to a halt in its apparent motion among the stars on the 2nd, and then begins to drift westward into Virgo. (Remember: Jupiter isn't really stopping and shifting into reverse. It only appears so because the earth is catching up with it as we sail along in our respective orbits.) By the end of the month, when it rises around 8:30 pm, it has gotten brighter (again, because we have caught up with it in space.)

Saturn, conversely, dims throughout the month as we pull away from it. It is still quite bright, however, and is visible all night long. Watch it closely in relation to the twins, Castor and Pollux, as it slowly sneaks away from them.

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