Tonight the Full Snow Moon will cast a hard, white eye over a land steeped in deep and silent drifts of snow. Or maybe not. It may be different by you, but we have next to no snow here in Duluth. Two inches in the woods, and a few small piles downtown. A guy can hardly find a trail to ski on.
The Snow Moon, named by the American Indians after the month’s most copious commodity, will shine near Leo the Lion’s brightest star Regulus. Look for it to rise directly opposite the sun near the time of sunset and pass due south around midnight. Another name for February’s full moon is the Full Hunger Moon, referring to how difficult it could be for native peoples to find food in the middle of winter.
Tonight’s moon is the same part of the sky as the sun in mid-August each year. In late summer the sun is rapidly moving south in the sky, rising noticeably later and setting earlier each day.
What’s true for the sun also applies to the moon. It quickly moves south this week, rising more than an hour later with each passing night. Moonrise times vary more dramatically than those for the sun, because the moon revolves around the Earth in under a month, zipping from one end of the sky to the other. The sun needs an entire year to do the same. That’s how long we take to revolve around it. By Thursday, moonless darkness returns as the moon pops up a half hour after twilight ends. When it does, it will have a companion – the planet Mars.
As you may have already noticed, we’ve got a new bright planet emerging in the eastern sky around 9 o’clock. Mars’ welcome red hue livens up the cold nights. I saw it shining above the paltry remnants of a cross country ski trail recently; it made me feel good this little planet is once again nearing Earth. Mercury is also on the move – that’s what planets do after all – with today marking its superior conjunction with the sun.
The photo above was taken by the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory earlier this morning. Superior conjunction means Mercury is lined up on the opposite side of the sun from Earth and at its most distant from us. Inferior conjunction occurs when the planet is between us and the sun.
Be patient. Mercury will move rapidly to the left of the sun in the coming weeks and by month’s end be easy to spot in the western sky during twilight. Northern hemisphere sky watchers can look forward to one of its best appearances of the year.