Skynotes: February 2026

Melbourne Sun times 

*When the sun is at its highest, crossing the meridian or local longitude.  

Moon Phases

Moon Distance

Wednesday 11th is lunar apogee (furthest from Earth) at 404,576 km.

Wednesday 25th is lunar perigee (nearest to Earth) at 370,135 km.

Planets

Mercury, after its recent solar conjunction, is a ‘daytime planet’ too close to the Sun to be visible.  

Venus is also a ‘daytime planet’ after its solar conjunction and so not visible this month.  

Mars will shortly have its solar conjunction passing behind the Sun and will not be visible this month either.  

Jupiter continues to be clearly visible this month from 8:30pm in the north-east at dusk. It will move across the northern sky during the night before fading in the north-west by 3am and a little earlier each night during the month.

Saturn remains visible early in the month low in the west at dusk before setting at around 10pm, but by mid-February as it approaches solar conjunction it will disappear from our night skies. 

Meteors 

The alpha-centaurids and beta-centaurids are active from 2nd to 25th peaking on the 8th. They are different but it is difficult to distinguish between them. Occurring low in the south near the Two Pointers, they are not strong showers but often have fireballs and persistent trails. 25 per hour can occur but six per hour has been more usual. 

See:
TheSky.com – Alpha Centaurids

Stars and constellations

In the East

High in the sky is Sirius, the brightest star at night and the principal star in Canis Major (Greater Dog). This is one of Orion’s two hunting dogs which is why Sirius is also referred to as The Dog Star. Directly below Sirius is the star Procyon which marks the location of Canis Minor, Orion’s smaller dog. 

Many cultures have recognised the first evening appearance of Sirius as marking a special time during the year for religious, agricultural or other reasons. It sits 8.6 light years away making it the fifth nearest system to us and its energy output reflects a name appropriately derived from the Greek seirios, meaning glowing or scorching. 

Sirius is, however, a binary system. Sirius A is twice the mass of our sun, almost 17 times as large and 25 times as luminous. Small faint Sirius B - seen using telescope imaging than masks brighter Sirius A - is a white dwarf about the size and mass of the Earth and the remnant core of a star that was once similar to our sun. Sirius A and B orbit their mutual centre of mass every 50 years. 

In the North to North-West

Directly north lies Orion, the hunter, seen in the southern hemisphere upside down. The famous three stars of his belt are Mintaka, Alnilam and Alnitak.

From his belt and to the upper right is a line of stars forming his scabbard in the centre of which is the beautiful Orion Nebula, a vast stellar nursery 1500 light years from us. To upper left in Orion is the blue-white supergiant star Rigel (one of his feet) and lower right is the red supergiant Betelgeuse (one of his shoulders).

Orion’s three belt stars also mark the base of the southern hemisphere’s Saucepan asterism.

To the north-west is the open star cluster the Hyades 153 light years away. It appears as a wedge or inverted V and forms the head of Taurus, the bull. At its lower right corner sits the red-giant star Aldebaran, a much closer star at 65 light years.

To the left is the Pleiades, a close cluster of young blue stars 400 light years from us. These stars formed together and are generally bound together under their mutual gravitational attraction, although over millions of years it is expected the cluster will disperse. Also known as The Seven Sisters for the number that might be seen with the naked eye. In some traditions the cluster represents a group of women. 

This 2004 Palomar Observatory image of the Pleiades reveals the cluster’s principal stars and associated gas. The Hubble Space Telescope’s Fine Guidance Sensors were also used to determine more exactly the cluster’s distance from Earth. The entire cluster contains around 1000 stars. Image: NASA/ESA&AURA/Caltech.

Learn more:
NASA Pleiades

In the South-East to South-West

The Southern Cross and the Two Pointers, (Alpha & Beta Centauri) are low in the south-east. In the south-west are the two small nearby galaxies, the Magellanic Clouds, named in honour of 16th century explorer Ferdinand Magellan who embarked on the first circumnavigation of the globe. They look like faint fuzzy patches but are best seen away from city lights. The earliest known physical depictions of them are in petroglyphs in South America.

Arcing across the night sky, and slowly wheeling as the Earth rotates during the night to the east, is the majestic Milky Way - billions of distant stars of our galaxy.

In visible light our view of the galaxy is largely restricted to our local spiral arm which is one of several that sit in the disc of the galaxy. We are looking ‘edge on’ into the flat disc of billions of stars. By contrast, the two darker sides of the night sky a view out of the galactic plane. In those directions we seen far fewer stars for a few thousand light years before intergalactic space begins.

International Space Station

ISS orbits every 90 minutes at an average distance of 400 km. It appears like a bright star moving slowly across the night sky.

Some bright passes are below for the Melbourne region.

On Thursday 5th, ISS passes overhead twice. First in the early morning and then again in the late evening. 

Morning

Thursday 5th 5:27am to 5:33am, South-West to North-East

Evening

Thursday 5th 10:08pm to 10:13pm, North-West to South-East

Thursday 26th 9:16pm to 9:21pm, West-South-West to North-North-East

Friday 27th 8:26pm to 8:33pm, South-West to North-East 

Heavens Above gives predictions for visible passes of space stations and major satellites, live sky views and 3D visualisations. Be sure first to enter your location under ‘Configuration’. 

On this day