David Dickinson

Pst

DwarfLab mini

Today's busy Sun in white light and hydrogen alpha - the eclipse was a miss here, but was looking to see if a prominence might reach out to the nearby Moon juuuust right...

Eclipse

Finally, GOES-19's SUVI instrument also caught today's eclipse:

Credit: Fabio Dornelles

Credit: Paul Maley

Credit: Joerg Schoppmeyer

Several observers also caught today’s solar eclipse as a partial from around the viewing area, including Paul Maley (South Africa), Fabio Dornelles (South Africa) and Joerg Schoppmeyer:

NOAA’s CCOR-1 coronagraph also caught another looping ‘double eclipse’ during today’s annular solar eclipse, as seen from its vantage place in geosynchronous orbit… this is actually due to the motion of the satellite itself.

Each frame is 10 minutes apart, and the eclipse shadow is the dark blotch moving off to the lower right. You can see how cloudy it was. I’ll add in more images from around the region as I see ‘em… word is, @esa.int ’s Concordia Station was going to make an attempt to see the eclipse.

Here’s one interesting capture of today’s annular solar eclipse over Antarctica as seen from space, courtesy of ESA’s EUMETSAT, which was capturing full disk views from the right longitude at the right time.

Now, how often all three coincide with the start of eclipse season (as occurred in 2026), I’ll leave that for someone else to ponder.

It’s rare that all three coincide on the same date. 2026 is the first instance in the 21st century, and the next time all three coincide isn’t until February 15th, 2056. Hey, Shrove Tuesday is always a great time for pancakes…

2026 marks the start of the Year of the Horse on the Chinese calendar.

The Chinese and Islamic calendars are both lunar-based (starting months on the New Moon) while Shrove Tuesday falls 47 days prior to Easter, fixed on the Sunday after the Paschal Full Moon, after the March vernal equinox.

Crescent Moon

Happy Shrove Tuesday, Ramadan Kareem, and Chinese New Year today for all who celebrate. Shrove Tuesday marks the start of Lent on the Gregorian Calendar, while Ramadan is the month of fasting and reflection on the Islamic calendar, marked by the sighting of the Moon tonight or tomorrow night.

Usually, we move a satellite out of the way of space debris. But what if we could prevent collisions by moving the debris instead? Meet OMLET: laser-based collision avoidance from the ground: www.esa.int/ESA_Multimed...

Trying out #ArkhamHorror #LovecraftLetter with @astrodave.bsky.social this evening. Good times. #boardgames

Comet 29P/Schwassmann-Wachmann outburst montage

Astrophotographer Eliot Herman caught the scene, as the +12th magnitude comet now resembles a snail-shaped spiral trekking through the constellation Leo the Lion: www.flickr.com/photos/eliot...

The comet is currently placed high to the south near midnight, in range of large telescope.

Something’s up with periodic comet 29P/Schwassmann-Wachmann. The comet is no stranger to cryovolcanism, as a known producer of volatile outbursts. This past week saw one of the comet’s biggest eruptions yet, jumping 100-fold or 5 magnitudes in just under 24 hours.

HDR astrophotography by Nicolas Lefaudeux Visit the post for more.

Yes please, to the 'Ikeya-Seki' scenario for sungrazing comet C/2026 A1 MAPS - hdr-astrophotography.com

GNEISS 2/09/26 YouTube video by Poker Flat Research Range

As a former North Pole Alaska resident (I was stationed at Eielson AFB in my USAF days back in '95-99), I do miss seeing aurora nearly every clear night. It definitely made observing in -40F worth it. And hey, Poker Flats did do a launch webcast: www.youtube.com/live/r9TWvxA...

Third 2026 mission launches from Poker Flat Research Range A tandem of NASA sounding rockets blasted off from Poker Flat Research Range at about 1:30 a.m. Tuesday on a mission to better understand how changes in the ionosphere influence the aurora’s appearanc...

The missions involved were the Polar Night Nitric Oxide (PolarNOx), the Black and Diffuse Auroral Science Surveyor (with the very best astro-acronym, BaDASS), and GNEISS (the Geophysical Non-Equilibrium Ionospheric System Science) explorer. www.uaf.edu/news/third-m...

NASA Rocket to Conduct ‘CT Scan’ of Auroral Electricity - NASA A NASA rocket mission will soon launch from Alaska to reveal the electrical circuitry underlying the aurora. The rocket will use a technique similar to a CT

Poker Flats Research Range outside of Fairbanks, Alaska has been busy as of late, launching three sub-orbital missions as part of a NASA’s and the University of Fairbanks’s campaign to perform a ‘CT scan’ on the aurora: www.nasa.gov/blogs/wallop...

Franzi Schimmer captured this Grizzly bear in Brooks Falls, Alaska just floating along, tippy-tapping down the river, browsing the salmon.

Prior to hibernation, up to 40% of a bear's body mass is fat, which is less dense than water (~0.9 g/cm^2), so the murder-monster is also a floaty-boaty.

Mars will loiter in the AM sky for the remainder of 2026, until it reaches opposition on February 19th, 2027.

This means that the Mars launch window opens later this year. JAXA’s Mars Moons Explorer (MMX) and ESCAPADE (already launched & loitering at the Sun-Earth L2 point) may make the trip.

Mars

One planet is missing from the February evening line-up: Mars. The Red Planet can be found low in the dawn, fresh off of solar conjunction on January 9th. Mars exited SOHO’s LASCO C3 view earlier this week, which means it’s now time to attempt to recover the planet as it begins its dawn apparition.

ESA's views from space show how lots of the 2026 Olympic venues actually span much of northern Italy: www.esa.int/ESA_Multimed...

Experimenting with video capture on the #Dwarf3 and managed to nab the classified OTV8 spaceplane passing Rigel.

Eclipse path

Note that, @esa.int ’s Concordia Station is in the path of Tuesday’s annular eclipse. There’s no word as of yet if they have plans to watch, but if anyone does catch it, it would be them.

The First Solar Eclipse of 2026 Sweeps Across the Antarctic Tuesday Eclipse season is nigh. The first of two eclipse seasons for 2026 kicks off next week on Tuesday, February 17th, with an annular solar eclipse. And while solar eclipses often inspire viewers to journe...

Next week’s solar eclipse sets lots in motion, including the season-ender: the March 3rd total lunar eclipse. Here’s our guide to the far-flung annular eclipse for @universetoday.com - www.universetoday.com/articles/the...

The first of two eclipse seasons for 2026 kicks off next week on Tuesday, February 17th, with an annular solar eclipse. And while solar eclipses often inspire viewers to journey and stand in the shadow of the Moon, this one occurs over a truly remote stretch of the world, in Antarctica.

The near & far sides of the Moon, as seen by NASA's LRO spacecraft.

China's Chang'e-6 lunar lander may have solved one of the great Moon mysteries: Why does its far side look totally different than the side that faces us?

A huge impact 4.3 billion years ago partially melted the Moon's mantle & made it lopsided, according to a new study. 🧪🔭

eos.org/articles/pri...

Sun

Today's Sun. Just a few spots holding down the fort. #DwarfMini

The Frequency of Solar Eclipses for a Given Place: A New Approach to a Classic Question In a classic 1982 paper in this journal, Jean Meeus used a statistical approach for finding the mean frequency of a total and an annular eclipse of the Sun at a given place on the surface of the Earth...

"Fascinating." You can see how annulars are now slightly more common vs. total solar eclipses in the stats:
arxiv.org/abs/2602.04797

YouTube video by NASASpaceflight SpaceX Falcon 9 Launches Crew-12 to the ISS

It’s worth watching for Crew Dragon if you have a station pass over the next few days, prior to docking on Saturday, February 14th at 3:15 PM EST.

Watch live: www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzeL...