Bob Moler's Ephemeris Blog

Tuesday, February 22nd.  The sun will rise at 7:32.  It’ll be up for 10 hours and 48 minutes, setting at 6:20.   The moon, 2 days before last quarter, will rise at 12:24 tomorrow morning.

The brightest night time star Sirius is just about due south at 9 p.m.  Otherwise Sirius can be found by following the three bright stars of Orion’s belt higher in the south southwest down to Sirius.   In binoculars Sirius is a dazzling blue-white diamond.  While officially pure white, Sirius has an arc light blue tinge.  After checking out Sirius in binoculars shift your view one binocular field down and you will come to a beautiful field of faint stars.  This is M41, number 41 on comet hunter Charles Messier’s list of fuzzy objects that weren’t comets.   Binoculars may see up to 25 stars, telescopes even more.  You might even be able to spot it with the unaided eye.  It’s a whopping 2,300 light years away.

* Times are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan.  They may be different for your location.