On the first Saturday of every month we post educational skywatching notes for the homeschool month ahead. Here’s the monthly northern hemisphere night-sky review for February 2021 from the Hubble Space Telescope’s website — it features, naturally enough, our term-namesake Orion and its alpha star Betelgeuse, which we’ll be writing about next week:
And here’s another February night-sky review, courtesy of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California — it also features Orion, along with the Moon and Mars:
One of the easiest astronomical exercises you and your students can do each month is print out your own free copy of the current two-page Evening Sky Map and monthly sky calendar available from skymaps.com:
- ➢ Evening Sky Maps – Northern Hemisphere Edition (updated monthly)
Each map includes a constellation chart for the month as well as a schedule of upcoming astronomical events and an astronomical glossary. (Monthly maps for the southern hemisphere and the equatorial regions are also available.)
The best stargazing nights in February will be toward the middle of the month: the moon will be new (and the sky darkest) on the 11th. As always, you can look up the moon’s phases in your River Houses almanac and also on the timeanddate.com website. 🌑🌓🌕🌗🌑
February is the third month of Orion Term, the second of the four terms that make up the River Houses homeschool year. And as noted above, our Great Star for the month of February is the famous red giant Betelgeuse (alpha Orionis), which we’ll be writing about next week. Print your own River Houses Star Calendar and follow along with us through the year as we learn about twelve of the high lights of the northern hemisphere night sky. 🌟
What celestial observations will you and your students be making in your homeschool this February? 😊
❡ All the star-sown sky: Teaching your students to recognize the constellations is one of the simplest and most enduring gifts you can give them. Our recommended backyard star guide and homeschool world atlas both contain charts of the constellations that will help you learn your way around the heavens. Find a dark-sky spot near you this month and spend some quality homeschool time with your students beneath the starry vault. ✨
❡ The starry archipelagoes: For a great weekly astronomical essay, perfect for older homeschoolers, pay a visit to “The Sky This Week” from the U.S. Naval Observatory. These well-written pages, posted each Tuesday, usually focus on one or two special astronomical events or phenomena. If you have high school science students, have them read these pages aloud to you each week, or ask them to study them and narrate a summary back to you. 🌌
❡ Make friendship with the stars: This is one of our regular Homeschool Astronomy posts. Add your name to our free River Houses mailing list and get great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox every week. 🔭
