MOST READERS must have wondered as to the origin of the word Sunday and come to the simple equation: Sun-Day, the day of the Sun. Others might even have rightly speculated that Monday has for origin Moon-Day. How many, however, did know that Tuesday stems from Tiw?s Day ?Day of Tiw, the Anglo-Saxon God of War (whose Roman equivalent is Mars, whereby ?Mardi? in French)? Wednesday, Thursday and Friday also emanate from the Germanic pantheon, named after gods Woden (Odin), Thor and goddess Freya. Only Saturday in English names of the week derives from Roman culture, being the day of Saturn, god of harvest.

The month of February, if we opt to consider months of the year instead of days, was the last of the Roman calendar. Its latin name, Februarius, had for origin Februalis, the period when sacrifices were held. Those with a preference for numbers, rather than etymology, will have noticed that there are 29 days in this year?s February. This is because February is the leap month of the Gregorian calendar upon which our civil calendar is based. Leap years result from calculations based on the Gregorian calendar which, being is a solar one, relies on the time the Earth takes to make one full turn around the Sun.

This time, contrary to popular belief, is not a whole number of days but rather an awkward 365.2422. The solution to this numerical problem is to make every year exactly divisible by four to contain an additional day. A keen reader will have instantly noticed that four times 0.2422 makes 0.9688, not quite a whole day. The additional day during the leap year is therefore slightly too much. To compensate, only century years divisible by 400 are leap. This means that century years 1800 and 1900 were not leap (despite being divisible by four), but 2000 was, and in case you are interested, so will be 4000.

You need not wait for a Saturday, though, to take a look at planet Saturn, well visible in the sky throughout the month of February. The ringed lord of a planet (of diameter nine times that of the earth) will indeed be in the limelight this year with American space probe Cassini reaching it in July. Its mission will be to enter orbit, make a several months? tour of its major satellites, as well as dropping a lander, named Huyghens, on the surface of its icy moon Titan. The Cassini probe has had a most unusual trajectory, being first fired in an opposite direction sunwards to use planet Venus, and then the Earth twice in a slingshot effect, to reach remote Saturn seven years after launch.

One may comment that seven years is decidedly a long time to travel, but interplanetary distances are considerable by everyday travel standards. If your car could travel upwards, it would take you one hour to reach outer space, five months to reach the Moon and fifty years to reach nearest planet Venus. To reach Saturn, when at its nearest, your flying car travelling at legally permissible speed would take a hefty 1,300 years, assuming you do not run out of fuel, because gas stations would be rather scarce on the journey.

And you would probably have to do some more shuttling around within the Solar System, for the planets are rarely aligned. For instance, Venus is in February 2004 the unmistakable bright ?star? that you can see high in the West after sunset, while Saturn is already high in the North in Gemini constellation, near the feet of the celestial twins. Jupiter is also away, in a direction far to that of Venus, and is presently favourably placed for observation in Constellation Leo, rising as a bright ?star? East soon after sunset.

A plain pair of 7x50 binoculars would allow you to distinguish the four main satellites, while a larger instrument would give a glorious sight of its multiple cloud bands. Planet Mars is still visible in February in Aries constellation, although not as glorious a sight in telescopes as it had been during its historic approach last August. The planet continues to live up to its reputation of inapproachability, with the complete failure of European lander Beagle 2 and the slow recovery of American probe Spirit after its technical hiccups in early January. Only Spirit?s twin probe Opportunity seems to be working as planned, with the beautiful landscape pictures it took of Mars surface, which are already on the Internet.

A star map, such the Star Disk of the Astronomical Society of Mauritius available in major bookstores, is a valuable aid to easily determine the positions of constellations mentioned above and to locate the planet within them. The map would also guide you through the Heavens, allowing easy location of the faint wisps of the Milky Way spreading now high in the sky, a beautiful sight in light pollution-free conditions. One should take advantage of clear, crisp nights to identify finer details within constellations, such as for example the famous Great Nebula in Orion constellation overhead.

Let us conclude our sky tour this month by teasing sharp-eyed observers to locate a pair of objects much further away than the planets: the Magellanic Clouds. These are two small irregular satellite galaxies, outside our own Milky Way Galaxy, well visible during evenings this month as two faint patches of light in dark conditions high above the southern horizon. Do not even bother to give a thought about using your wonderful flying car to reach them: the present age of the universe, estimated at some 15 billion years, would not even be sufficient to make the one way trip.

R. Auckbur