This is Ephemeris for Wednesday, February 11th. Today the Sun will be up for 10 hours and 16 minutes, setting at 6:05, and it will rise tomorrow at 7:47. The Moon, 2 days past last quarter, will rise at 5:00 tomorrow morning.
Let’s take our weekly look at the whereabouts of the naked-eye planets. Before twilight fades, Mercury may be spotted low in the west below and right of Saturn. Binoculars may help in finding it. Saturn is the brightest star-like object low in the west southwestern sky as soon as it gets dark, and it will set before 9:30. In a telescope Saturn sports a very thin ring, 2.6 degrees from being edge on and is slowly opening. Jupiter is the brilliant star-like object more than halfway up in the east-southeastern sky. It’s the brightest star-like object in the sky. It is still moving to the west, but is slowing down and will stop and reverse its course a month from now. Jupiter’s 4 brightest moons can be seen even in binoculars, if held steadily enough. They shift position night to night. At 8 PM tonight, all four Galilean moons can be seen.
The astronomical event times given in this blog are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan (Lat 44.7° N, Long 85.7° W; EST, UT – 5 hours) unless stated otherwise. Times will be different for other locations.
Addendum
Saturn appears with Mercury in the west-southwestern sky at 7 PM tonight February 11, 2026. The tin planet Mercury will most likely be dimmer than it appears here. It is always hard to spot in the twilight. Start looking for it around 6:45 PM or about a half hour after sunset. Created using Stellarium.
Jupiter as it appears tonight, February 11, 2026, in its orientation at 9:00 PM moving against the stars of Gemini. Also shown is its track from last July to next July, and the retrograde loop that is currently making, slowly moving to the West which it will do for the next 27 days until it stops on March 10th. Then it will resume its eastward motion. The inset shows a magnified view of the west end of the retrograde loop. Created using Stellarium, LibreOffice Draw and GIMP.
Tomorrow, I’ll discuss, more fully, why planets are seen to move in retrograde motion.
The Moon 3 days past last quarter, as seen tomorrow morning, February 12, 2026, at 6 am. A view visible in small telescopes showing an image with and without selected features labeled. Created using Stellarium, LibreOffice Draw, and GIMP.
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Telescopic Saturn, and Jupiter (north up) as they would be seen in a small telescope with the same magnification at 8 PM tonight, February 11, 2026. Saturn will be 16.2″ in diameter, but its rings, being nearly edge on, may show up brighter than seen here, and extend to 37.7″. They are tilted 2.8° from being edge on. Jupiter will be 44.4″ in diameter. Earlier in the evening Mercury may be glimpsed. Its too small to be represented here, because it’s only5.9″ in diameter and is 79.6% illuminated. The (”) symbol means seconds of arc, or 1/3600th of a degree. Created using Cartes du Ciel (Sky Charts), LibreOffice Draw and GIMP.
The naked-eye planets and the Moon at sunset and sunrise on a single night, starting with sunset on the right on February 11th, 2026. The night ends on the left with sunrise on the 12th. The Venus and Mercury labels overlap near the sunset sun. Click or tap on the image to enlarge it. Created using my LookingUp app and GIMP.
This is a low precision ephemeris of the Sun Moon and naked eye planet positions for today and tomorrow, February 11th and 12th, 2026. Some of the columns are self-explanatory, others are not. The transit column is the time that the body crosses the meridian and is due south. Elong, for elongation, is the angle between the Sun and that body. RA is right ascension, which is the object’s east-west position on the celestial sphere in hours and minutes. Dec is declination which is the north-south position of the object on the celestial sphere in degrees and minutes. R is the distance of that object from the Sun in astronomical units. An astronomical unit is about 93 million miles or 150 million kilometers. And Delta is the distance of that object from the Earth, also in astronomical units. I omit the ‘m’ in am and pm for compactness. The data was generated using my LookingUp for DOS app and displayed as a table by my Ephemeris Helper app.
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