In the Sky This Month

Saturn leads the Moon down the western sky this evening. The planet looks like a bright star just below the Moon. Venus, the much brighter Evening Star, is to their lower right.

Earth is snuggling closest to the Sun for the entire year this week. It will be at its absolute closest tomorrow, at about 91.5 million miles, which is about 1.5 million miles closer than average.

There’s a beautiful meeting between the crescent Moon and the planet Venus tonight and tomorrow night. Venus is the brilliant Evening Star. It stands well above the Moon this evening, and much closer to it tomorrow night.

The Quadrantid meteor shower should be at its best tomorrow night. Its meteors appear to rain into the sky from the extinct constellation Quadrans Muralis, which represented an instrument used to plot star positions. Today, that spot is in Boštes the herdsman.

The Milky Way arches high across the sky on early winter evenings. It outlines the disk of our home galaxy. At nightfall it passes from the Northern Cross, in the west, to W-shaped Cassiopeia high in the northeast, to near the face of Taurus, the bull, in the east.

The Pleiades star cluster is also known as the Seven Sisters because seven of its stars are fairly easy to pick out. They form a small but prominent dipper. The brightest member is Alcyone, which is much bigger, heavier, and brighter than the Sun.

The Pleiades star cluster is one of the prettiest sights in the sky-a group of fairly bright stars that forms a tiny dipper. It is well up in the east at nightfall, above the brilliant planet Jupiter and the star Aldebaran, to the right of Jupiter.

Fornax is in the southeast at nightfall. Its brightest stars form a faint wedge that aims toward the south. Fornax was one of 14 constellations created by French astronomer Nicolas Louis de la Caille after he mapped southern skies from South Africa in the 17th century.

The Moon will pass amazingly close to the star Antares, the heart of the scorpion, early tomorrow. An even brighter light will stand not far to their left: the planet Mercury. They are quite low during the dawn twilight.

Capricornus is in the zodiac, so it’s well known. But it’s small and faint, so it’s not easy to see. Now, though, Venus, the Evening Star, points the way. It is passing close to the constellation’s brightest star. The rest of the sea-goat spreads out below Venus.