February, the second month, is named for Februus, the Roman god of purification. It marked a period for making sacrifices to atone for crimes or sins and making amends to any you have wronged.

Focus on the planets

Mercury appears very low on the southeastern horizon during the last week of February. The innermost planet is on view briefly about 40 minutes before sunrise.

Venus returns to the evening sky low in the west at sunset. Venus sets about a half-hour after the sun as February opens but this time period will increase slowly as the month continues.

Mars is situated well up on the southwestern horizon at dusk where it remains in view until 10 p.m. Mars continues to diminish in size and brilliance but remains prominent because of its placement in a star-free region of the sky.

Jupiter blazes high in the south an hour after sunset, easily outshining any other object nearby being 10 times brighter than its nearest planetary neighbor, Saturn.

Saturn begins the evening to the upper right of Jupiter but is situated to its giant neighbor’s lower right when both planets set shortly after midnight. Look for reddish-orange Aldebaran to Saturn’s lower left. Uranus and Neptune are in conjunction with the sun and remain hidden from view during February.

Our celestial neighborhood

The asteroid belt is a band of rocky debris that orbits the sun between Mars and Jupiter. The largest known asteroid is Ceres, discovered in 1801 and roughly 575 miles in diameter, while the smallest are the size of typical rocks and boulders.

Today the number of catalogued asteroids is more than 20,000 and their total likely exceeds 1 million. The larger asteroids are irregularly shaped with pocked surfaces and once were thought to be the remains of a planet destroyed in some cataclysmic collision. Today most astronomers believe they simply represent material left over from the early solar system that never coalesced together to form a planet.

Some asteroids, the Apollos, have highly elliptical orbits that cause them to cross the Earth’s orbit. This conceivably could put them on a collision course with Earth. In 1994, an asteroid the size of a school bus passed within 105,000 kilometers as it cut across Earth’s orbit. This may seem like a safe miss, but given Earth’s average orbital velocity of 30 kilometers per second, it translates to less than an hour from possible disaster. The latest “near miss” came this Jan. 8 when an asteroid about 1,000 feet across zipped past at a distance of 839,000 kilometers. Even this “small” rock could have devastated a state the size of Texas, one asteroid tracker observed.

February events

1 Sunrise, 6:55 a.m.; sunset, 4:43 p.m.

2 Candlemas or Groundhog Day. This is a cross-quarter day marking the midpoint between the winter solstice and spring equinox.

4 Moon in last quarter, 8:35 a.m.

6 The orange-colored star to the lower right of the moon tonight is Antares.

12 New moon, 2:42 a.m. This is Mardi Gras or “fat Tuesday,” the last chance to have a party before the austerity of Lent.

14 Valentine’s Day. The moon is at apogee, its farthest distance from Earth, today.

16 The sun enters Aquarius on the ecliptic. Look for the crescent moon to the lower left of Mars on the southwest horizon at dusk.

18 The sun enters the astrological sign of Pisces but astronomically has just entered Aquarius.

20 Moon in first quarter, 7:03 a.m. The moon lies very close to Saturn during the early evening and may appear to temporarily occult or cover the ringed planet.

21 Look for Mercury to peek over the southeastern horizon about a half-hour before sunrise. The moon is located about midway between Jupiter to its upper left and the dynamic duo of Saturn and Aldebaran to its lower right.

22 Jupiter and the moon are very close tonight. You may be able to spot one or two of Jupiter’s moons with powerful binoculars.

27 Full moon, 4:17 a.m. The full moon of February is known variously as the Snow Moon, Hunger Moon or Wolf Moon. The moon is at perigee, or its closest approach to Earth, tonight and the confluence of these two events may result in very high tides.

28 Sunrise, 6:15 a.m.; sunset, 5:22 p.m.

Clair Wood taught physics and chemistry for more than a decade at Eastern Maine Technical College in Bangor.