The night skies of February are filled with beautiful star patterns, and so this month we take a closer look at another famous constellation, now rising high in the east after sunset: Gemini, the Twins!<\/p>\n
If you\u2019re observing Orion, then Gemini is easy to find: just look above Orion\u2019s \u201chead\u201d to see Gemini\u2019s \u201cfeet.\u201d Or, make a line from brilliant blue-white Rigel at the foot of Orion, through its distinct \u201cBelt,\u201d and then on through orange Betelgeuse. Keep going, and you will end up between the bright stars Castor and Pollux, the \u201cheads\u201d of the Gemini Twins. While not actually related \u2013 these stars aren\u2019t bound to each other and are almost a magnitude apart in brightness \u2013 they do pair up nicely when compared to their surrounding stars. Take note: more than one stargazer has confused Gemini with its next-door neighbor constellation, Auriga. The stars of Auriga rise before Gemini\u2019s, and its brightest star, Capella, doesn\u2019t pair up as strikingly with its second most brilliant star as Castor and Pollux do. Star-hop to Gemini from Orion using the trick above if you aren\u2019t sure which constellation you\u2019re looking at.<\/p>\n
Pollux is the brighter of Gemini\u2019s two \u201chead\u201d stars – imagine it has the head of the \u201cleft twin\u201d – and is located about 34 light-years away from our Solar System. Pollux even possesses a planet, Pollux b, with a mass over twice that of Jupiter. Castor – the head of the \u201cright twin\u201d – by contrast, lies about 51 light-years distant and is slightly dimmer. While no planets have been detected, there is still plenty of company as Castor is actually a six-star system! There are several deep-sky objects to observe as well. You may be able to spot one with your unaided eyes, if you have dark skies and sharp eyes: M35, a large open cluster near the \u201cright foot\u201d of Gemini, about 3,870 light-years away. It\u2019s almost the size of a full Moon in our skies! Optical aids like binoculars or a telescope reveal the cluster\u2019s brilliant member stars. Once you spot M35, look around to see if you can spot another open cluster, NGC 2158, much smaller and more distant than M35 at 9,000 light-years away. Another notable object is NGC 2392, a planetary nebula created from the remains of a dying star, located about 6,500 light-years distant. You\u2019ll want to use a telescope to find this intriguing, faint, fuzzy object located near the \u201cleft hip\u201d star Wasat.<\/p>\n
Gemini\u2019s stars are referenced quite often in cultures around the world, and even in the history of space exploration. NASA\u2019s famed Gemini program<\/a> took its name from these stars, as do the appropriately named twin Gemini North and South Observatories<\/a> in Hawaii and Chile.<\/p>\n Originally posted by Dave Prosper: February 2022<\/p>\n Last Updated by Kat Troche: December 2025<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The night skies of February are filled with beautiful star patterns, and so this month we take a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":290815,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[85,46,17120,141,145],"class_list":{"0":"post-290814","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-il","9":"tag-israel","10":"tag-night-sky-network","11":"tag-science","12":"tag-space"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290814","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=290814"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290814\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/290815"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=290814"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=290814"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=290814"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}