The Sky This Week - Thursday February 15 to Thursday February 22

The New Moon is Friday, February 16. Mars, bright Jupiter and Saturn form a line together with the bright stars Antares and Spica in the morning skies. Saturn is in binocular range of some interesting nebula. The asteroid Ceres is visible in binoculars.

The New Moon is Friday, February 16. There is a partial Solar eclipse on the 15th, seen from Antarctic and parts of south America.

Evening sky on Thursday February 22 looking west as seen from Adelaide at 21:00 ACDST (60 minutes after sunset). The waxing Moon is near the Pleiades.

Similar views will be seen throughout Australia at the equivalent local time (60 minutes after sunset, click to embiggen).

Morning sky on Saturday February 17 looking east as seen from Adelaide at 5:21 ACDST (90 minutes before sunrise). Mars is close to Antares.  The inset is a simulated binocular view of Saturn.  Saturn is close to the Lagoon and Triffid Nebulae and the globular cluster M22.

The International Space Station will pass below Saturn at this time.

Similar views will be seen throughout Australia at the equivalent local time (90 minutes before sunrise).

Evening sky on Saturday February 17 looking north as seen from Adelaide at 23:55 ACDST the asteroid Ceres is between close to the bottom star of the constellation of Cancer, the crab.

The inset is a simulated binocular view of the area around Ceres.

Similar views will be seen throughout Australia at the equivalent local time (click to embiggen).

Black and white binocular chart suitable for printing (click to embiggen and print).

The large circle represents the field of view of 10×50 binoculars.

The asteroid 1 Ceres is relatively easily visible in binoculars until around the middle of this month, it fades during this time.

Ceres is relatively easy to find. It is above the northern horizon just before midnight , and is near Iota Cancerii (the bottom brightish star of Cancer. You may need to watch night to night as the asteroid moves to be sure of its identity.
 
Venus  is lost in the twilight.

Mercury is lost in the twilight.

Jupiter climbs still  higher in the morning sky and is moving away from Mars.

 Mars is moving down the body of Scorpius the scorpion. Mars moves away from Antares (the rival of Mars) over the week but is still reasonably close to see the contrasts of the two different red objects. Mars comes very close to several dim globular clusters. These are telescope only events and the brightness difference between Mars and the dim clusters will make to them to see, on the 20th Mars is nearly on top of magnitude 9 NGC 6235.

Saturn climbs higher in the morning sky. It is within binocular range of several attractive clusters and nebula, including the Lagoon nebula and the bright globular cluster M22.

The bright planets form a line in the morning sky  with the bright stars Antares and Spica, this will look quite attractive.

Printable PDF maps of the Eastern sky at 10 pm AEST, Western sky at 10 pm AEST. For further details and more information on what’s up in the sky, see Southern Skywatch.
Cloud cover predictions can be found at SkippySky.

Here is the near-real time satellite view of the clouds (day and night) http://satview.bom.gov.au/