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Valentine sky 2017

The night sky is a giant bay window with a great view into our universe, and it’s made for lovers. It can really set the stage for a romantic evening, especially with a full moon!

Unfortunately we don’t quite have a full moon on Tuesday night, but it’s almost full, rising in the east around 10 p.m., adding to an evening of stellar romance. The moon isn’t the only member of the heavens that can add to romance in the Marshall night sky. Stars and even planets also make a wonderful night for lovers as well. I’ve enjoyed writing this column for almost 20 years, and I’m not ashamed to say I’m an old romantic at heart, so around Valentine’s Day I love to point out the great signs of love in the night sky.

Early in the evening, even before darkness totally sets in, the extremely bright planet Venus pops out in the southwestern sky. Appropriately enough, Venus is named after the Roman goddess of love. Just to the upper left of Venus is a much fainter planet with a distinctly reddish glow. It’s Mars, named after the Roman god of War. Remember the old book, “Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus,” written in 1992 by John Gray?   Well, in a way men and women are in a celestial hug in the southwest sky right now. OK, I know that’s a bit of a reach!

Also in our Valentine sky this week is a great story of everlasting love in the constellations Cassiopeia and Cepheus. According to Greek and Roman mythology they were the King and Queen of ancient Ethiopia. It’s quite an involved tale as to how they got up into the night sky, but in a nutshell it involves the vanity of Queen Cassiopeia. One day when her ego was totally over the top, Cassiopeia boasted at the top of her lungs that she was so beautiful that she was even more beautiful than Hera, the queen of the gods.

Immediately that sent Hera into a deep rage! She charged down from Mount Olympus, tied Cassiopeia up in her throne, and tossed her up into the sky where she’s still marooned among the rest of the stars. This time of year Cassiopeia is hanging high in the northwest sky. It’s a W-shaped formation of stars that outlines the throne with the banished queen tied to it.

When her husband Cepheus found out what happened he begged Zeus, the king of the gods, to heave him up into the heavens next to his beloved so they could be together for all time. The constellation Cepheus is just to the right of Cassiopeia in the northwest sky. While the king is a larger constellation than the queen, it’s a lot fainter and looks more like a house with a steep roof than a king.

Another regular in the Valentine evening sky is the bright star Betelgeuse, the second brightest star in Orion the Hunter. Even though it marks one of Orion’s armpits, it has a connection to Valentine’s Day in several ways. First, Betelgeuse has a reddish hue and reaches its highest point in the sky on Valentine’s at midnight, but its best connection to the holiday created by lovers and helped along by Hallmark cards is that it literally behaves like a giant beating heart, and what a big heart it is! In fact, when you see Betelgeuse in the early evening southeast sky I can safely say that you’re looking at one of the single biggest things you’ve ever seen. It pulses in size in roughly a six-year cycle, and at its maximum it’s around a billion miles in diameter. By comparison, our own sun is just under a puny million miles in girth. Most astronomers feel that within the next 100,000 to one million years, Betelgeuse will suffer the ultimate heartbreak when it explodes in a colossal supernova. There will be no quick emotional rebound when that happens!

Mike Lynch is an amateur astronomer and professional broadcast meteorologist for WCCO Radio in Minneapolis/St. Paul and is author of the book, “Stars: a Month by Month Tour of the Constellations,” published by Adventure Publications available at bookstores at http://www.adventurepublications.net.

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