Today:
Tomorrow or Tuesday morning offer your best, last views of Mercury, as it starts to lower back into the Sun’s glare, best viewed from 6:25 to 6:40 AM, low in the southeast. Mercury’s swifter orbit takes it around and behind the Sun, though it won’t reach Superior Conjunction (directly behind the Sun) until the end of February.
Monday:
The brilliant bluish-white star Vega, appearing one quarter of the way above the northwest horizon as darkness settled in by 5:30 PM, does an interesting thing for the next month or so. It will set tonight about 8:15 PM far to the north. But it will rise again 5 hours later at 1:10 AM, climbing into the northeast.
Tuesday:
While Orion’s Belt stands out as it rises higher into the southeast during the evenings, more impressive might be the stars themselves. Each of these stars is a stellar powerhouse, the two outer stars more than 100 thousand times brighter than our Sun, and the middle star perhaps 500 thousand times brighter!