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February 2012 | Diese Seite in deutsch  |
| Index: | Links to Astronomy...  |
 Overview
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 Events
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 The Starry Sky in February Sunrise and Sunset The Phases of the Moon The Planets |
 50th Anniversary of Friendship 7 Jupiter, Venus, and Mercury at the Evening Sky | ||
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north top east left west right south bottom valid for: 1.2. 23h CET 15.2. 22h CET 1.3. 21h CET red line: celestial equator green line: ecliptic |
...with astronomical dusk/dawn for 52°31'30" north and 13°18'45" east at 3m above sealevel (StarryNight 2.0)
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1.: 05:50
11.: 05:35
21.: 05:17 (CET) | |
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1.: 07:51
11.: 07:34
21.: 07:14 (CET) | |
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1.: 16:50
11.: 17:09
21.: 17:28 (CET) | |
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1.: 18:50
11.: 19:07
21.: 19:24 (CET) |
 | 7.: 22:54 |
 | 14.: 18:04 |
 | 21.: 23:35 (CET) |
Perigee (Moon close to Earth, distance Earth-Moon 367900km) 11.: 19:32 (CET)
Apogee (Moon far from Earth, distance Earth-Moon 404900km) 27.: 15:02 (CET)
 | at the end of the month visible at the evening sky in Capricornus/Aquarius/Pisces | |
 | visible at the evening sky in Aquarius/Pisces | |
 | visible at the nightly sky in Virgo/Leo | |
 | visible at the nightly/evening sky in Aries | |
 | visible at the nightly sky in Virgo | |
 | visible at the evening sky in Pisces | |
 | invisible at the evening sky in Aquarius | |
 | visible at the morning sky in Sagittarius |
Illustrations: StarryNight 2.0 & -- jd --
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I guess I'd like a glass capsule...
(John Glenn, February 20, 1962)
7 astronauts were selected by NASA until May 28, 1959, who were planned for the first manned space flights of the USA. John H. Glenn was the oldest and the only one coming from the US marine corps, the other astronauts were test pilots from the Navy or the Air Force.
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John Glenn in the Mercury space suit (photo: NASA) |
Originally the flight of Glenn was planned to be like the ones of his predecessors Alan Shepard (MR-3, 5th of May 1961) and Gus Grissom (MR-4, 21st of July 1961) who made ballistical flights into a space equivalent height but without orbitting the Earth. Their Mercury capsules were shot into space with a Redstone rocket. The launch of a more powerful Atlas rocket failed on April 25, 1961, so that NASA didn't risked to try this with a human as a pilot.
At August 7, 1961 German Titov made 14 orbits around Earth on his flight and with this he annulated the small flaw of the flight of Yuri Gagarin who didn't orbitted the Earth completely. - At the end of November 1961 the flight of the chimpanzee Enos with a Mercury-Atlas combination was successful (MA-5, 28. November 1961).
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Launch of Friendship 7 / Mercury 6 (photo: NASA) |
The rocket lifted the capsule into an orbit with an apogee, the highest point of the elliptical course around Earth of 265 kilometer and a perigee, the closest point to Earth of the orbit of 159 kilometer. With this orbit the capsule would had been able to make up to a hundred circulations until the remaining atmospheric resistance would had slowed the object down and would had brought it back to the ground.
After about one and a half Earth orbits problems within the automatic capsule stabilization occured. Originally it was planned that Glenn might be only a passenger on his flight around the world like Gagarin was on his journey. But the problems became too critical to correct them remotely controlled from the ground. Only by manual correction it was possible to stabilize the space ship again.
After three Earth orbits and an about five hours lasting flight "Friendship 7" watered within the Atlantic Ocean at 9:43 p.m. CET successfully despite of some more technical problems. The capsule came down only ten kilometers away from the destroyer "Noa".
*
There were three further Mercury missions following: "Aurora 7" (MA-7) with Scott Carpenter on May 24, 1962, "Sigma 7" (MA-8) with Walter "Wally" Schirra on October 3, 1962, and "Faith 7" (MA-9) with Gordon Cooper on May 15, 1963. The 7th of the 7 first astronauts, Donald K. Slayton, was originally planned for MA-7, but he didn't came into action because of a stated cardiac defect. Many years later with the Apollo-Soyuz-Test-Poject in July 1975 he got his chance for a flight into space.
The Mercury capsule flown by John Glenn is now located in the national aerospace museum of the Smithsonian Institute in Washington. - According to his own proposal Glenn got another flight into space at the time when he was already senator of the USA: He took place at the mission STS-95 with the space shuttle Discovery in 1998 from October 29 to November 7 with an age of 77 for medical/biological tests in zero gravity on elderly persons - this time as a passenger.
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At the western sky after sunset this month you will see the bright Venus and also as a shiny planet Jupiter. Venus increases its brightness steadily and moves higher into the evening sky. There she meets Uranus at the 9th of February. At 19h CET Venus and Uranus will have a distance of 0.5 degrees to each other with Venus in the south. Until they set shortly after 21h CET the distance will decrease to about 0.4 degrees. Below the horizon Venus will pass Uranus in a distance of 0.3 degrees. At the next day in the evening at 19h CET Venus will be 0.75 degrees north of Uranus (see also previous month). After that rendezvous Uranus moves further towards the Sun and will become invisible in the evening dawn until the end of this month.
Just like Uranus Jupiter is moving towards the horizon and becomes steadily (but nearly unnoticably) weaker. At the mid of this month Jupiters brightness will have a magnitude of -2m.1 with a virtual diameter of 36 arc seconds.
Mercury with his path at the western sky from Feb. 26 until March 17, 2012 |
One day later the Moon will be close to Jupiter. Shortly before Jupiter sets at 23h CET the distance Jupiter-Moon will be 4.9 degrees.
Jupiter and Venus at the western sky at March 13, 2012 |
At March 13 Jupiter and Venus have their close encounter. At 19h CET their distance to each other will be nearly exactly 3 degrees. Venus will be already north of Jupiter. At that date Jupiter will have a brightness of -2m.0 and a virtual diameter of 35 arc seconds. Venus will have a brightness of -4m.86 (according to StarryNight), a virtual diameter of 20 arc seconds and an illuminated phase of 58%. Afterwards the two planets will move in different directions again: Venus will still move up into the evening sky, while Jupiter will move further towards the Sun.
At the end of March there will be again attractive rendezvous between Moon and Jupiter and between Moon and Venus. First the Moon will encounter Jupiter at March 25. At 20h CET the Moon will be circa 3.5 degrees south of Jupiter:
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At the next day in the evening Venus and Moon will be 2.4 degrees away from each other at the western sky:
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At March 27 Venus will reach her widest eastern elongation of 46 degrees. After that she will move towards the Sun again. Until the mid of April Jupiter will be visible at the evening sky and will disappear into the evening dawn then on his way towards the conjunction with the Sun at May 13.
created: 2011-09-07 from German version
modified: 2011-09-08 translated
modified: 2011-09-20 Himmeljahr events added
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