Anytime you gaze upon the night sky the stars of the celestial dome make up a plethora of pictures and patterns.

Of course, the patterns are more numerous and intricate in darker rural skies. Most of the designs we see are the same individual constellations that were used by ancient cultures as visual aids to tell tales of mythology that vary from culture to culture.

Most of the tales that are best known in this part of the world are spinoffs of Greek and Roman mythology that have been verbally mangled over the years.

That happens to tales spread by word of mouth, it’s inevitable. While different cultures have their own unique mythology, all of the constellations are pictures of the characters that make up these soap operas of the night sky.

What’s also a common thread is that most of these constellations don’t look much like what they’re supposed to portray. As I say at my star parties, you really have to put your imagination into overdrive to see these constellations as what they’re supposed to represent. That’s OK though, because I believe it’s part of what makes casual stargazing even more fun.

Many constellations display some pretty unique geometrical shapes and asterisms. The connecting lines of stars in the constellation Cassiopeia the Queen resemble a giant W in the heavens.

The right side of the constellation Leo the Lion outlines a backward question mark.

The constellation Auriga the Chariot Driver looks like a lopsided pentagon.

One of the best constellations consists of the seven stars that make up the rear end and tail of Ursa Major the Big Bear. You see that every clear night as the Big Dipper.

There are much larger asterisms in the Butler sky that use stars from several adjoining constellations. These can be great tools in learning constellations.

One of these is known as the Summer Triangle, made up of the brightest stars from three separate constellations. At the corners are: Vega, the brightest star in the constellation Lyra, Deneb in the constellation Cygnus the Swan, and Altair in Aquila the Eagle.

Each of these stars is the brightest shiner in its home constellation. The Summer Triangle is easy to see at a glance in the summer and autumn sky and can help you find your way around that part of the celestial theater.

The very best asterism of the night sky, in my opinion, is the Winter Triangle, now on display these late winter evenings in the southern sky.

It’s a perfect equilateral triangle made up of three bright stars from three separate constellations. It’s made up of Betelgeuse from the constellation Orion the Hunter, Procyon, the brightest star in the small constellation Canis Minor — the Little Dog, and Sirius, the brightest star in Canis Major, the Big Dog.

Unless you’re viewing from a lit up shopping mall parking lot, you should have no trouble spotting the perfect Winter Triangle because of the brilliancy of its member stars. In fact Sirius, at the bottom of the triad, is the brightest star available in the night sky.

Sirius and Procyon are almost twice the diameter of our sun and are more luminous than our home star, but the main reason they’re so bright in our heavenly dome is they are relatively close to the Earth.

Procyon is 11 light years away and Sirius is just a bit more than 8 light years in distance. With one light-year equaling just under six trillion miles, it would still take much more than a long weekend to journey to those shiners!

If you flew to Sirius in a jet airliner averaging 500 mph, it would take you more than 11 million years to get there! They better have meals and movies on that flight.

Sirius can be a whole lot of fun to view through even a small telescope. That’s because it never gets up very high in the sky and its light has to travel through much more of Earth’s blurring atmosphere to reach our eyes. If upper air winds are strong and there’s a lot of turbulence, Sirius can appear as a changing kaleidoscope of colors as its light rays get bounced around.

The third star of the perfect winter triangle is Betelgeuse, a huge star well more than 500 light years away. This super red giant star is almost a billion miles in diameter, and sooner or later will burst in a colossal supernova explosion, maybe within a million years if you feeling like waiting up for it. Until then you can see the upper right hand member of the Winter Triangle shining brightly and sporting an easily seen reddish hue.

It’s just amazing to me that these three stars that make up the perfectly proportioned Winter Triangle just happen to be positioned the way they are in the winter sky. Coincidence? Or not?

Celestial hugging

Early Sunday and Monday morning, the waning crescent moon will have a close encounter with Venus in the low southeastern sky about a half-hour before sunrise.

On Sunday morning, the moon will be just to the upper right of Venus.

On Monday morning, the moon and Venus will be less than four degrees apart. Venus is about 140 million miles from Earth right now.

You’ll also enjoy the phenomena of earthshine on the moon. Not only will you see the thin crescent of the moon which is direct sunlight reflecting off the moon, but you’ll also see the rest of the moon’s disk bathed in dim gray light.

That’s second hand sunlight bouncing off the Earth and on to the moon.

Make your plans

On Tuesday you have an opportunity to see a total solar eclipse if you happen to be anywhere in the Pacific Ocean in a path from about 500 miles north of the Hawaiian Islands to around Malaysia.

I’m extremely lucky to be celebrating my 60th birthday on this planet this week in Hawaii. In Oahu, where I’ll be Tuesday, it’s not quite a total eclipse but more than half of the sun will be temporarily “eaten away” by the moon’s silhouette.

Before you break the bank and grab a plane westward, mark Aug. 21, 2017, on your calendar. That’s when there will be a total solar eclipse in a band running across the U.S. from Oregon to Missouri to South Carolina.

Take care of yourself. You want to be around for this!

Mike Lynch is an amateur astronomer and professional broadcast meteorologist for WCCO Radio in Minneapolis/St. Paul and is author of the book, “Stars, a Month by Month Tour of the Constellations” published by Adventure Publications and available at bookstores and at www.adventurepublications.net.