Stargazing in February: Trying to catch clusters
Go out for stargazing session on a dark night this month – well away from streetlights – and you’ll find that stars and the brilliant planet Jupiter aren’t the only sights on offer.
The glowing band of the Milky Way arches overhead. And, as your eyes grow used to the dark, you’ll also notice a handful of small fuzzy patches scattered around the heavens.
These are star clusters, where hundreds or even thousands of stars live in close proximity, held together by the bonds of their gravitational pull.
Just above Jupiter lies the brightest and best-known star cluster, the Pleiades. My favourite description of this-sight comes not from an astronomer, but from the pen of the Victorian poet laureate, Alfred Tennyson. In his epic poem Locksley Hall, the Pleiades are “a swarm of ï¬reï¬ies tangled in a silver braid”.
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