Adrian Dening's Stars Over Somerset

Wednesday, 11 February 2026 21:15

Monday 16th to Sunday 22nd February 2026

How about starting with a bit of a challenge on the early evening of Wednesday 18th? If you look towards the west south west just as the Sun is setting at 6pm, Mercury, Venus and a very thin 1%-lit waxing crescent Moon will be just about to disappear below the horizon. Saturn will be a little above and to the left of the trio. Mercury will have a magnitude of -0.5 and Venus will be -3.8, which is very bright, so they will be easy to spot.....unlike the 1%-lit Moon!

Please remember that if you have brought your telescope out, you must never accidentally catch a glimpse of the actual Sun in the eyepiece. I talked about magnitudes last week. The Sun has a relative magnitude of around -26, which basically means that it is humongously bright and would instantly blind you, permanently!

Wait until it is properly dark, say 7pm of the Wednesday evening and have a go at spotting a magnitude +8.0 planet Neptune which will be a little above and to the right of Saturn. Being +8.0, you will definitely need the telescope for this one, where Saturn, being about +0.8 will be easily visible to the naked eye.

If you repeat the experiment at 7pm the following evening on Thursday 19th, Saturn and Neptune will appear in near-enough the same position towards the west, but they will now be joined by a 5%-lit crescent Moon because the Moon orbits around us and so its movement is completely different to the other planets of the Solar System that, like us, are orbiting around the Sun. You see different phases during the month as sunlight illuminates different parts of the Moon's surface.