Celestial Trifecta Over Texarkana This Friday Night Into Saturday Morning

If you happen to be out under the stars this weekend, you might want to look up and hope for clear skies, because starting Friday night, under a full moon, things are going to be happening.

We were originally supposed to go camping this weekend with our Boy Scout Venture Crew but not enough of the crew was able to go so the campout got cancelled. A shame, too, because up in the night sky this just might be one of the best weekends to go camping in a while.

• Full Snow Moon: It should be big and bright. It got it's name of the Snow Moon because usually February brings us the most snow. This year, not so much. Look for the giant glowing thing in the sky.
• Partial or Penumbral lunar eclipse: As long as we have a big full moon, we might as well park the earth between it and the sun for a little while so we can get a Penumbral, or partial eclipse out of it. According to the fine celestial watchers at USA Today the eclipse will begin Friday night at 6:43PM Texarkana time.
• Comet 45P: They say this comet will be visible to the naked eye early Saturday morning but I fear we have two things working against us on seeing it; it's small, and there will be a very bright full moon to deal with. Nevertheless, if you have really good binoculars or telescope, you should be able to find Comet 45P in the Eastern sky around 2AM our time. Look just over the right shoulder of the constellation Hercules. If you're not sure where that is, download Google Sky to your smart phone and it will help you find it.

Happy sky watching.