02/21/2026
This Week’s Sky at a Glance, 2026 February 21 – February 28
This is a good time to search for a few obscure constellations, if you are up for the challenge. The trio will be at their best, as it were, an hour or two before midnight. You will need dark, clear skies and a good view to the south.
Below Regulus, at the heart of Leo and to the left of Alphard in serpentine Hydra, is a collection of faint stars that forms Sextans the Sextant. Johannes Hevelius, the creator of Leo Minor, came up with this constellation to commemorate the sextant that he used for measuring star positions, and which he lost when his observatory burned in 1679. Good luck with seeing a sextant here; perhaps it represents what was left after the fire.
Below Sextans and Hydra, very near the horizon, is Antlia the Air Pump. Nicholas Louis de LaCaille was an 18th century astronomer who also created obscure constellations to fill in gaps in the sky. The laboratory air pump is one of several scientific instruments honoured with a position in the stars during that era, but in our sky it seems to be past its prime. If you think of a compass as a needle then Pyxis the Compass does look like what it represents. It is between Antlia and Puppis to its right, again low in our sky even at its best. Originally part of the mast of Argo Navis in Ptolemy’s star chart, La Caille reimagined it as a mariner’s compass, although it is pretty much lost in our sky.
This Week in the Solar System
Saturday’s sunrise is at 7:19 and sunset will occur at 6:01, giving 10 hours, 42 minutes of daylight. Next Saturday the Sun will rise at 7:07 and set at 6:11, giving 11 hours, 4 minutes of daylight.
The Moon is near the Pleiades on Monday, one day before first quarter, and near Jupiter Thursday. This Saturday telescope users can see Jupiter’s moon Io disappear behind the planet at 6:40 and reappear from the planet’s shadow at 9:53, with the Red Spot approaching mid-transit. This weekend at 6:30 pm Venus will be a binocular width above the western horizon, setting before 7, with Mercury within two binocular widths above it and Saturn two binocular widths to Mercury’s upper left. By next weekend Venus will be to the left of now dimmer Mercury.
Tune in to the Sunday Night Astronomy Show at 8 pm on the YouTube channel and page of Astronomy by the Bay.
