Bob Moler's Ephemeris Blog

Ephemeris for St Valentine’s Day, Tuesday, February 14th.  The sun will rise at 7:44.  It’ll be up for 10 hours and 24 minutes, setting at 6:09.   The moon, at last quarter today, will rise at 2:43 tomorrow morning.

As I said before today is St. Valentine’s day.  However one of the symbols of this Christian Saint’s day, beside the red hearts, is the pagan Roman god of love Cupid, the cute counterpart of the erotic Greek god Eros.  Cupid supposedly made people fall in love by shooting them with little love darts with his bow.  One of those darts is in the sky as the constellation Sagitta the arrow which is visible on summer evenings and now in the early morning.  The Roman goddess of love is represented, brilliantly, in the evening sky as the planet Venus.  On St Valentine’s Day, 2000 the NEAR spacecraft entered orbit of  the asteroid Eros, and soft landed on it 364 days later.  They say love is in the air.  Apparently love is in space too.

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

Addendum

Six views of asteroid 433-Eros in February 2000. Images from NASA's NEAR-Shoemaker spacecraft.

Sagitta the arrow represents Cupid’s dart in the summer sky.

Delphinus, Sagitta and the Coat hanger. Diagram created using Stellarium.