In the Sky This Month

The planet Uranus is high overhead at nightfall. It’s below the Pleiades star cluster, and far to the right of the bright orange star Aldebaran, the eye of the bull. Through good binoculars, the planet looks like a faint star.

The beautiful constellation Orion the hunter strides across the southern sky this evening. It is in the southeast as darkness falls, with its brightest star, Rigel, to the lower right of its prominent three-star belt.

The Pleiades star cluster is high overhead at nightfall, at the bull’s shoulder. It looks like a tiny dipper. Recent research says the cluster was born along with several smaller groups that have gone their own way. Together, they formed the Giant Pleiades Complex.

The gibbous Moon slips past Antares, the bright heart of the scorpion, the next couple of mornings. The star will be to the left or lower left of the Moon at dawn tomorrow and a little closer to the upper right of the Moon on Wednesday.

NGC 2419 is a cluster of one million stars packed into a dense ball. It is 300,000 light-years from the center of the galaxy, making it one of the farthest known residents of the Milky Way. It is in the east-northeast at nightfall and is an easy target for telescopes.

The constellation Lynx is well up in the east-northeast at nightfall. It’s about half way between the Big Dipper and the twins of Gemini. You need nice, dark skies to see much. In fact, its name is a bit of a joke: you need the eyes of a lynx to spot it.

The Moon snuggles close to the bright star Spica late tonight. They climb into good view by about midnight, and are high in the sky at dawn. At their closest, they will be separated by just a couple of degrees, which is the width of your finger held at arm’s length.

M79 is a ball-shaped cluster of about 150,000 ancient stars. It is losing some of those stars, however, creating a long tail. It is in Lepus, the hare, in the south-southeast at nightfall. M79 is below the outline of the hare, but you need binoculars to pick it out.

R Leporis is one of the reddest stars in the galaxy. It’s also known as Hind’s Crimson Star in honor of the astronomer who first described it. Lepus is in the southeastern sky in early evening, to the lower right of Orion. You need a telescope to see R Leporis.

Arneb is the leading light of Lepus, the hare. It’s in the southeast at nightfall, to the lower right of brilliant Orion. The star’s name is Arabic for hare. The name also represented the whole constellation. Arneb is much bigger and brighter than the Sun.