Bob Moler's Ephemeris Blog

Ephemeris for Monday, February 13th.  The sun will rise at 7:46.  It’ll be up for 10 hours and 21 minutes, setting at 6:07.   The moon, 1 day before last quarter, will rise at 1:34 tomorrow morning.

The most prominent constellation of the winter sky is Orion, and is most astronomer’s favorite.  It seems odd that such a minor personage of Greek myth would have such a prominent constellation named for him.  He is even mentioned twice in the book of Job, though in the the original Hebrew the word for Orion means fool.  And that pretty much sums Orion’s life up.  A luckless fool.  One of several contradictory stories of his death has Orion dying of a Scorpion sting.  And when placing Orion in the heavens the gods made sure that Orion and Scorpius are never in the sky at the same time.  This however doesn’t work in the southern hemisphere.  Orion can be found in the south at 9 p.m. an upright rectangle of bright stars framing the three stars as his belt.

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

Addendum

Orion upright and due south. Created using Stellarium.