A crisp, frosty, February night presents a spectacular sky. A simple step outside the house into the winter's darkness will dazzle you this month. The brilliant stars of Orion and his neighbors stand high in the south after sunset. High in the west-southwest, Jupiter shines as the brightest object in the night sky, except for the moon. The true spectacle of the winter sky requires a trip away from city lights. Depending on where you live, this can take anywhere from a drive of a few minutes or two hours - such are the penalties of living in suburbia with its attendant streetlights. A trip into the star-studded darkness of a winter's night revitalizes the spirit in a way no other sight can. Go ahead - give it a try. You may even spot the northern lights while you're out there.

Mercury, the innermost planet, can best be seen about an hour after sunset between February 10 to 20 - look low in the west during dusk. However, you don't have to wait that long to see it. On February 6, try catching a glimpse soon after sunset when a one-day-old crescent moon glides to the left of Mercury. The sky will be bright, so use binoculars to focus in on the moon, and the magnitude -1 planet should be an easy object just 2° to its right. Make sure you do this after sunset to protect yourself from accidentally viewing the sun through binoculars - this would severely damage your eyes.

Two days later, on February 8, the growing crescent moon stands 4° away from magnitude 1.2 Mars. The Red Planet continues its very slow slide toward the sun and will not reach solar conjunction until July 1. Currently it lies at the western end of Pisces the Fish.

Regular readers will have no problem identifying the next planet on our nightly tour. Jupiter has dominated the sky ever since last fall. For most of the month it shines brilliantly at magnitude -2.2 on the Pisces/Aries border. Ideally placed for early evening viewing, it stands high in the west after sunset. Some of the best telescopic views of Jupiter can be had by observing the planet during twilight. The planet's four Galilean moons are also easily visible through small telescopes in twilight. Jupiter's disk carries a complex amalgam of zones and belts that are worthy of some extended viewing. During brief moments of steady seeing that occur as the atmosphere settles, the view of Jupiter is breathtaking.

Watch the features each night as they cross the visible surface. Be mesmerized by the meanderings of the moons back and forth in front and behind the disk of Jupiter as they trace out their individual paths. If you are steadfast in your observations, you may even notice the 1-2-4 orbital synchronicity of Io, Europa, and Ganymede.

On February 10, Jupiter lies 4° north of the moon. The pair sinks toward the horizon, with Mars leading their way.

Saturn resides almost 10° higher than Jupiter, dimmer than mighty Jove at magnitude 0.5 but still easy to spot in this relatively sparse region of sky. Again, telescopically the views are awesome - especially in twilight when the Ringed Planet appears so delicate. The southern face of the rings tilts toward us by 20° and the planet spans 16". The long axis of the rings extends almost triple that distance. Titan, the largest and brightest of Saturn's 18 moons, orbits the planet in 16 days. From February 1-3 and February 17-19 you'll find this magnitude 8.3 saturnian moon to the east of the planet. On Valentine's Day (February 14), Titan lies due south, and on February 6 and 22 it lies due north of Saturn. (For more details, see "Tailing Titan and Iapetus," page 67, February issue Astronomy.)

Along with the bright planets in the western sky, the autumnal constellations are slowly sinking as the evening passes into night. The Great Square of Pegasus swings low into the northwest, with Andromeda following. Pisces dips in the west, joined by Cetus the Whale. The winding constellation Eridanus the River flows almost endlessly from Orion down to the southwestern horizon. Orion fills the southwestern sky with overwhelming beauty, surrounded by the throngs of bright stars in adjacent constellations.

Imagine a swollen star spanning more than 400 times the diameter of the sun, so large that its outer layers are more rarefied than the gases in Earth's atmosphere. If such a star replaced the sun, it would stretch beyond the orbit of Mars. If you moved this star 540 light-years away, at a distance from which the sun would be invisible, the star would still shine brightly across the 3,000 trillion miles of space - but now it would be seen as a point of light. And that's exactly what we see when looking at the star at the upper-left part of Orion that marks his shoulder, the bloated red-giant Betelgeuse.

A star of similar importance to Betelgeuse lies in the opposite corner of Orion, the contrasting bluish-white Rigel. At almost double Betelgeuse's distance from Earth and accounting for the inverse-square law that states that an object at double the distance will appear four times fainter, Rigel paradoxically appears to be of a similar magnitude as Betelgeuse.

The answer to this apparent dilemma is simple: Rigel is even more of a powerhouse than giant Betel-geuse, radiating four times as much light as its neighbor. Suddenly, Orion no longer appears as a flat object, but its three-dimensionality comes alive. Many planetariums now exploit this knowledge by "flying around" such star groups using a digital star projection system called Digistar.

Turn your attention to the northeastern sky to find the asterism of the Big Dipper (in Ursa Major) rising higher each evening. At the same time, watch for Leo the Lion rising due east, led first by the bright, 1st-magnitude star Regulus and the associated stars nearby that form the familiar sickle (backward question mark). Gemini stands high above Leo and contains the moon on February 15 and 16. Auriga the Charioteer passes overhead, with Perseus leading the way toward the northwest. Cassiopeia sinks in the northwest as Ursa Major rises in the northeast, all circling around the North Celestial Pole, approximately marked by the magnitude 2.1 star Polaris.

The moon joins the myriad of winter stars during these cold February nights, wandering across the sky. Careful study of the moon reveals its hourly, slow motion from west to east relative to the starry background. Occasionally the moon passes in front of a star, causing an occultation. Such lunar occultations are fascinating to watch. Try timing the stars' disappearances using a short-wave radio that can pick up WWV Fort Collins. This radio station transmits a 24-hour time signal at 2.5, 5, 10, 15, and 20 MHz.

An easy occultation occurs on February 17, when the moon crosses in front of Delta Cancri, a 4th-magnitude star. The event, visible even with tripod-mounted binoculars, occurs around 9 p.m. CST for observers located in midwestern states. For observers farther west, the event takes place earlier, and for those in the eastern United States it occurs later. On February 11, the moon swings by Saturn and occults Mu Ceti at the same time. Check with your local astronomy club or the International Occultation and Timing Association for more detailed predictions of these and other interesting occultations throughout the year.

The early bird catches the worm, or in this case, Venus, which lies in the morning sky before sunrise. On February 1, Venus rises two hours before the sun, and a 26-day-old waning crescent moon stands about 12° away.

The following morning will be full of activity, and not just from the pairing of Venus and the moon. February 2 is called Candlemas, or better know these days as Groundhog Day. The saying went, "If Candlemas be fair and bright, Come, Winter, have another flight; If Candlemas bring clouds and rain, Go, Winter, and come not again." Many of the early risers on this holiday who are heading out to see the groundhog may glimpse Venus and an 8-percent-lit moon hovering nearby; they lie less than a degree apart - a beautiful pairing among the stars of Sagittarius low in the southeast.

Venus falls rapidly into the morning twilight, becoming harder to see, though its brilliant magnitude of -3.8 makes it stand out longer than any other planet would in a similar situation.

Of mere academic interest, Venus passes just half a degree south of Neptune on February 22, but unfortunately the event occurs in a bright sky and Neptune will not be visible.

Uranus reaches conjunction with the sun on February 6 and moves into the morning sky, becoming visible in late March and early April.

If you like spiral galaxies, by the end of February an interesting grouping rises in the east. The tail of Leo the Lion almost seems to point the way. With only a 3-inch telescope, you can find the bright, tilted spiral galaxy M88 in Coma Berenices; it is the northeastern point of a stunning archipelago of galaxies known as Markarian's Chain.

The mythology of Coma Berenices, Berenice's Hair, bears repeating. When the king of Egypt went off to war, his beautiful young wife, Berenice, promised to give her gorgeous locks of hair to the goddess Venus in return for a safe homecoming for her husband. When the king returned, Berenice cut off her tresses and placed them in the temple. When the locks disappeared, the temple guards were threatened with execution for their negligence. But the astronomer Conon saved their lives by pointing to the glittering arc of stars in the sky and claiming them to be Berenice's hair, transported to the heavens.

The shorter days of winter still allow for some good solar observing, just so long as you take suitable precautions for safe viewing. Ideally, project an image of the sun onto a piece of white card, and you will almost assuredly see sunspots this month. The sun should reach the maximum of its 11-year cycle of activity this year. Numerous sunspots will dot the surface and change shape daily.

If you're an amateur astronomer born in February, then you're in good company. Pluto discoverer Clyde Tombaugh was born on February 15, 1906; Galileo was born on February 15, 1564; and Nicolas Copernicus was born on February 19, 1473.

Martin Ratcliffe is Director of Theaters at the Exploration Place in Wichita, Kansas. Alister Ling is a meteorologist working for Environment Canada in Alberta.