I want to share with you this week in Skywatch the joy of stargazing in the early hours of the morning. For many years before I retired, I was a super early riser, but not by choice. So that I could be at work on time at 5am, I would get out of bed just before 4. As brutal as that is, the great thing about it is that I can start my day with the stars when there are no clouds in the way. This time of year is especially beautiful because the stars are dazzling and bright when I look east.

That’s because these stars form the great winter constellations that rise in the east in the early morning and decorate the sky. These are the same stars we see in the early evening sky in early January. I affectionately call this part of the sky “Orion and his gang.”

Even if you’re not that familiar with constellations, you probably recognize Orion the Hunter. It resembles an hourglass or a crooked fly. Its trademark is three bright stars lined up neatly in a row, forming Orion’s Belt. Just below the Belt are three fainter stars that form Orion’s Sword. The middle star in the Sword is fuzzy. That’s because it’s not a star, but a massive cloud of hydrogen gas more than 8,500 trillion miles away, when new stars are born through gravity.

At the bottom right of Orion’s Belt is Rigel, the brightest star in Orion, marking the hunter’s left knee. Betelgeuse is the other super-bright star at the top left of the Belt, marking Orion’s armpit. You can easily see that it glows reddish. Betelgeuse is what astronomers call a super-red giant star, which is a little less than a billion miles across. Our Sun is less than a million miles across.

Elsewhere in Orion’s band, there’s Auriga, the retired charioteer, with the bright star Capella. And then there’s Taurus, the bull with the little arrow pointing to the right outlining the bull’s face, with the reddish star Aldebaran marking the beast’s angry red eye. Above Taurus are the Pleiades, a beautiful bright star cluster that resembles a tiny Big Dipper. The Pleiades star cluster is made up of over a hundred young stars that are probably less than 100 million years old.

The brightest member of Orion’s corridor in the eastern half of the sky is actually “renting space” under the usual winter glow. It’s the bright planet Jupiter in the constellation Taurus, directly above Orion’s head. And what makes it all even more special is the spectacular conjunction of Jupiter and the red planet Mars. A conjunction is when two or more celestial bodies appear close together in the sky. In this case, Jupiter and Mars are about one degree apart. Jupiter is the significantly brighter of the two. With a telescope and binoculars, you can get both planets in the same field of view. Mars will appear more or less like an orange dot, but along with Jupiter, you’ll see up to four of its brightest moons and maybe even some cloud bands above the big planet.

Which stars we see, and when and where we find them in the sky, depends entirely on where the Earth is around the Sun and where you are on the rotating Earth. The Earth’s orbit around the Sun and its daily rotation on its axis determine which direction in space you are facing at any given time. All the stars and constellations are so far away that from our perspective on Earth, it looks like we are in a giant celestial bowl. That was more or less what people believed until the 17th century AD.

We now know that this is not the case, but when observed, it seems that way. The constant change of the night sky on a daily and seasonal basis is one of the joys of stargazing and amateur astronomy for me and many other stargazing fanatics. The stars are always moving and everything follows familiar cycles.

So set your alarm, grab a cup of strong coffee, and enjoy some winter stargazing without the wind chill!

Mike Lynch is an amateur astronomer and retired broadcast meteorologist at WCCO Radio in Minneapolis/St. Paul. He is the author of Stars: a Month by Month Tour of the Constellations, published by Adventure Publications and available in bookstores and at adventurepublications.net. Mike is available for private star parties. You can reach him at [email protected].

Skywatch programs

Thursday, August 22, 8:30-10:30 p.m., Tracy Library in Tracy, Minnesota. For more information and the location of the Star Party, call 507-629-5548 or visit tracypubliclibrary.org.

Friday, August 23, 8:30-10:30 p.m., Lake Shetek State Park near Currie, Minnesota. For information, call 507-872-7031 or go online at www.dnr.state.mn.us/state_parks/lake_shetek/index.html.

Saturday, August 24, 8:30-10:30 p.m., Camden State Park near Lynd, Minnesota. For information, call 507-872-7031 or go online to www.dnr.state.mn.us/state_parks/park.html?id=spk00127#homepage.