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On this day in 1853 - February 13th - J.L.E. Dreyer was born.

Dreher was a Danish-Irish astronomer who served for nearly 25 years the Director of Armagh Observatory in Northern Ireland. He's best known for compiling the New General Catalogue of Nebulae and Clusters of Stars – NGC numbers are still in use for these objects.

On this day in 1564 - February 15th - Galileo Galilei was born.

Galileo was one of the first to observe the heavens with a telescope and is often considered the "father of experimental physics".

On this day in 1948 - February 16th - Gerard Kuiper discovered Miranda, moon of Uranus.

Uranus has 27 known moons, all but 5 discovered since the late 1980s. William Herschel (discoverer of Uranus) discovered two. Over sixty years later English astronomer William Lassell discovered two more. It was nearly another century before Miranda was discovered. Most of the moons of Uranus are named for characters from Shakespeare.

On this day in 1930 - February 18th - American astronomer Clyde Tombaugh discovered Pluto.

He was at the Lowell Observatory in Arizona searching for the massive Planet X which Perceval Lowell had thought was influencing the orbit of Neptune.

On this day in 1473 - February 19th - Nicolaus Copernicus was born.

One of the most famous names in astronomy, Copernicus was a prominent citizen of Frombork in Poland. Astronomy was something that he fit in with many other duties and interests. However his book championing the idea that the Sun - not the Earth - was the center of the Solar System was deemed revolutionary by the Church seventy years after his death and banned for two centuries.

On this day in 1962 - February 20th - John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth.

John Glenn made three orbits of the Earth in his space capsule Friendship 7. It involved five hours strapped firmly in place in a large tin can. A brave man.

On this day in 2006 - February 22th - the discovery by the Hubble Space Telescope of two new moons of Pluto was announced.

The two little moons P1 and P2 were later named Hydra and Nix. Hydra is the 9-headed serpent that battled Hercules. Nix is the mother of Charon the ferryman and goddess of the night.

On this day in 1987 - February 23rd - supernova SN1987A was discovered.

Sn1987A was the first supernova visible to the unaided eye - though only in the southern hemisphere - in nearly four hundred years. It occurred in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way.

On this day in 1968 - February 24th - the discovery of the first pulsar was announced.

A pulsar is a rotating neutron star that emits pulses of radiation. A neutron star is what's left of most massive stars after a supernova explosion. At that time it was still highly theoretical as no one had previously discovered a neutron star. The discoverer was graduate student Jocelyn Bell. Her supervisor Anthony Hewish received a Nobel Prize for work in radio astronomy and it was noted that he had played a "decisive role in the discovery of pulsars".

On this day in 1897 - February 27th - Bernard Lyot was born.

Bernard Lyot was a French astronomer whose work brought him major international awards. His most important contributions to astronomy were in solar observing, especially the invention of the coronagraph which makes it possible to observe the Sun's corona without waiting for a total eclipse.