Southern Hemisphere night sky tonight, February 2025

If you're based in the Southern Hemisphere and want to know what you can see in the night sky tonight, this page is for you.

Our monthly-updated night-sky guide will show you what you can see in the Southern Hemisphere over the coming weeks.

We'll include monthly highlights, stars, constellations, planets and deep-sky objects.

For more advice, read our guides to Southern Hemipshere stargazing and the best night-sky targets to see in Australia.

Highlights

The Alpha Centaurids meteor shower is active 28 January–21 February and ideal for Southern Hemisphere observers.

The maximum rate of 6 meteors per hour is expected just before dawn on the 8th.

The radiant, near the Southern Pointers, will be quite high in the early hours, with morning leading up to the peak mostly Moon-free (first quarter on 5th).

This shower can produce yellow/blue fireballs, often reaching negative magnitudes, with trains lasting from seconds to minutes!

The constellation of Orion. Credit: Chasing Light - Photography by James Stone james-stone.com — The constellation of Orion, as seen from the southern hemisphere. Credit: Chasing Light - Photography by James Stone james-stone.com

Stars and constellations

The upside-down hunter of Orion is prominent in the northwest evening sky, with the first-magnitude blue ‘foot’ star, Rigel, above (south) and his red ‘armpit’ star, Betelgeuse, below (north).

Following Orion faithfully are his two hunting dogs: Canis Major (Greater Dog), best known for the brightest star, Sirius, high in the north; and Canis Minor (Lesser Dog) to the lower right, recognised by the star Procyon.

These stars form an equilateral triangle with Betelgeuse.

The Planets

February is the last chance to glimpse Saturn and Venus, low in the western twilight, before they go into solar conjunction.

Find the crescent Moon near Saturn on the 1st and Venus the following night.

As twilight closes, Uranus is low in the northwest, near the Pleiades, followed by Jupiter in Taurus, brilliantly outshining nearby Aldebaran.

The evening planetary parade continues, with Mars due north around 22:00, brighter and redder than the adjacent Gemini twins, Castor and Pollux.

The Large and Small Magellanic Clouds appear over the Very Large Telescope in the night sky above Chile. Credit: J. C. Muñoz/ESO

Deep-sky

The constellation of Volans is sandwiched between the Milky Way and the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC).

The naked-eye star Gamma (γ) Volantis (RA 7h 08.5m, dec. –70° 32’) is a brilliant double with mag. +3.8 and +5.6 components, distinctively yellow and white respectively, 14 arcseconds apart.

About a binocular field away (5.5° to the east-northeast) lies another impressive double, Epsilon (ε) Volantis. It’s composed of mag. +4.4 and +7.9 stars, blue and yellow respectively, a snug 7 arcseconds apart.

Between Gamma and Epsilon is the mag. +10.6 Meat Hook Galaxy, NGC 2442 (RA 7h 36.3m, dec. –69° 35’).

A 200mm scope reveals a distinct centre bar (1 x 3 arcminutes) and a stellar nucleus pointing to a 1-arcminute-wide patch. Although it looks detached, it’s part of a bright narrow arm of NGC 2442, called NGC 2443.