Here’s a Valentine’s Day idea: a night of stargazing
Published 12:01 am Sunday, February 13, 2011
After a wonderful candlelit dinner may I suggest a great way to top off your Valentine’s Day celebration Monday night? Drive to a dark spot, preferably in the countryside, park the car, turn on some soft music, and then … go stargazing.
There’s love in the night sky for you and your Valentine, so dress warmly, recline in some lawn chairs and snuggle under the celestial theater of love.
Early in the evening, the brightest star you can see will be in the lower southwestern sky, the planet Jupiter.
There will be nearly a full moon, slightly oval in shape. Just below and a little to the left of Monday’s moon is one of the better valentines in the sky, the bright star Betelgeuse (pronounced “beetle-juice”).
It’s a brilliant reddish star in the mighty constellation Orion the Hunter. It can be seen in the midsouthern sky in the early evening. Betelgeuse is at Orion’s armpit. (OK, not so romantic). Look for the three bright stars that make up Orion’s belt. The bright reddish star to the upper left of the belt is our valentine star, Betelgeuse.
Betelgeuse is a super red giant star more than 600 light-years away (one light-year equals almost 6 trillion miles). It beats likes a giant cosmic heart. Every six years it goes from about 500 million miles in diameter to nearly a billion miles around.
Even at it’s smallest, Betelgeuse is way bigger than our sun, which isn’t even a million miles in diameter. You could fit at least 160 million of our suns inside Betelgeuse. and Earth is only about 8,000 miles across. Feeling small?
Betelgeuse is so huge that if you were to put it in our solar system in place of our sun, it would swallow the planets Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars, and would reach out almost to Jupiter.
Betelgeuse is nearing the end of its life. It won’t die of a broken heart, but within a few million years it will go out in a supernova explosion, and for a time, it will be as bright as a full moon in our sky.
One more nice valentine in the night sky is rising in the East not too far above the horizon. It’s a formation of stars that resembles a backward question mark on its side. That’s the chest and head of the constellation Leo the Lion.
The love angle here is twofold: If you see the constellation as a lion, you can say that it symbolizes that you’re the “king of the beasts” in the jungle of love. Or just tell the love of your life that the reverse question mark you see in the heavens means that’s there’s no question about your future together.
Mike Lynch is an astronomer and professional broadcast meteorologist for WCCO Radio in Minneapolis and is author of the book, “Washington Starwatch,” available at bookstores. Check his website, www.lynchandthestars.com.
The Everett Astronomical Society: www.everettastro.org/.
