Bob Moler's Ephemeris Blog

Ephemeris for Fat Tuesday, Tuesday, February 21st.  The sun will rise at 7:34.  It’ll be up for 10 hours and 44 minutes, setting at 6:18.  The moon is new today, and won’t be visible.

The winter Milky Way doesn’t seem as bright as the summer part.  That’s mainly because we are looking away from the center of the Milky Way Galaxy. The galaxy appears to us as a band encircling the sky because we are within it, and our galaxy is a flat spiral galaxy.  Our galaxy has the mass of maybe 200 billion suns and has a diameter of about 100 thousand light years.  We are approximately 25 thousand light years from the center, which lies in the summer constellation of Sagittarius.  There is a star forming region in the constellation of Orion, and part of it shows up as the Great Orion Nebula.  There are more of these regions south of Orion, which we can’t see from Michigan.  It’s said that the southern Milky Way is brighter than the one we see.

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

Addendum

Artist's conception of the Milky Way. From NASA/JPL/Spitzer/Cal Tech