People often ask me which is the best season to view the night sky.
Of course, there is no “best”; every season brings to our view something new and wonderful overhead. You just need to be outdoors to experience it.
One’s favorite, on the other hand … well, that’s something each stargazer must sort out for themselves.
I learned long ago that my favorite night sky is that of summer. I’m pretty sure this comes partly from my childhood, when there was no school the next day and I could spend warm nights stargazing as long as I wanted.
But having that beautiful summer Milky Way arching overhead is something that no other season can top for me.
At this time of year, however, I stand under the winter stars and wonder if maybe I should rethink my favorite. There is no other night sky that sparkles more than that of winter. If only it weren’t so darned cold!
Get one look at our current starry nights and you’ll do like I do … dress warmly and become mesmerized by its beauty.
Central to all is the great constellation Orion, the hunter. Looking more like an hourglass or bowtie tipped on its side during early evening hours, Orion is a great place to begin our winter stargazing.
Orion contains two of the sky’s brightest stars.
Look for reddish-orange Betelgeuse forming the rectangle’s upper left (a shoulder) and the white star Rigel at its lower right (a knee).
At the center of the figure we find the three, equally bright stars that outline the hunter’s “belt.”
Follow these three stars downward to the left, and you’ll soon encounter Sirius.
This bluish-white jewel twinkles low in the southeast after dark this week and is one of the nearest stars to us at “only” 51 trillion miles, or 8.7 lightyears, distant.
Trace those three “belt” stars upward and you’ll soon encounter the reddish-orange star Aldebaran, surrounded by a V-shaped grouping of stars known as the Hyades.
Continue that line upward and you’ll find the shimmering star cluster we know as the Pleiades, or Seven Sisters, a stunning sight in binoculars.
This tiny cluster containing a thousand or so stars lies less than 400 lightyears away and may be only between 50 million and 100 million years old — a veritable cosmic youngster.
But this is just the beginning. Starting with Aldebaran, let’s take a walk in a counterclockwise direction and we’ll find, in order, Capella, Castor, Pollux, Procyon, Sirius and Rigel before returning to Aldebaran.
If the winter stars aren’t already dazzling enough, Mother Nature has thrown into the mix a couple of brilliant planets this year.
Outshining all except the moon and Venus (low in the west at dusk), the giant planet Jupiter appears just to the upper left of Aldebaran.
And near the bright “twin” stars of Gemini, Castor and Pollux, we find the Red Planet Mars, this week reaching its brightest and closest point to Earth of its current orbital cycle.
You know what? With all these brilliant jewels glistening overhead on January nights, maybe my favorite isn’t the summer sky after all!
