Astrophiz164-FebruarySkyGuide

Astronomy Astrophiz Podcasts

Moon Phases: Feb 6 Apogee Full moon Feb 14 Last Quarter moon Feb 20 New moon Feb 27 First Quarter moon Evening Sky Venus and Jupiter in the West half an hour after sunset, some nice planetary action in morning skies and beautiful signature stars and constellations throughout the month Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) has already been a great sight in the Northern Hemisphere and now having passed by the sun, will now be best seen in Northern Australia in places like Darwin and Cairns around the 3rd of February. For those further South, you’ll have to wait for the morning of the 6th of February, however with the full moon over in the west, you’ll need binoculars to see the comet to compensate for the moonlight. On the 14th the comet is close to Aldebaran. In Ian’s Tangent we find out all about the water and alcohol content of comets and the obscure fact (according to some media outlets) that Comet C/2022 E3 is 1000 penguins wide. In two weeks we bring you an amazing interview with Dr Vishal Gajjar who is a project scientist for Breakthrough Listen, the search for extraterrestrial technosignatures. He is based at UC Berkley and has developed novel AI algorithms to interrogate the immense data sets from the worlds largest radio telescopes. This interview is pure science and right out of this world. You’ll love it! The team’s latest paper has just been published in Nature and a preview is available at https://tinyurl.comFORWARDSLASHtechnosigs