The conundrum of stargazing this time of year is that while you have some of the best and brightest constellations of the year, it’s hard to pull yourself away from that warm fireplace.

Lynch’s law of winter stargazing clearly states that the beauty of the heavens is directly proportional to how cold it is. January skies are very pleasing to the eyes, but tough on your skin.

Not only should you dress for it, you should be prepared with a big thermos of something warm.

Once you are armed against the chill with an attitude, get out and enjoy the best stargazing of the year.

In the early evening the extremely bright planet Venus beams away at you in the low south-southwest sky. It’s by far the brightest starlike object you can see.

The next brightest star just to the upper left of Venus is Mars. It’s not as bright as Venus but you can easily spot it with its reddish glow.

Over the next several weeks the two planets will appear to get closer and closer in the sky as both planets and the Earth travel along in their respective solar orbits.

The Venus and Mars show doesn’t last long into the evening as both planets sink below the horizon around 8 to 9 p.m.

As an added attraction to kick off this new year, the new crescent moon will be joining Venus and Mars on Sunday and Monday night. Don’t miss this spectacular celestial hugging.

With the exception of Mars and Venus in the Butler western sky, you can’t help but notice that most of the really bright stars reside in the eastern half of the heavens.

Over the last couple of months most of the summer constellations have slowly sunk below the western horizon, not to be seen again in the evening until next June.

Of course they didn’t move, we did. As the Earth continues its annual circuit around the sun, the nighttime side has now turned away from the stars and constellations of summer.

The dominant constellation of autumn, Pegasus the giant winged horse, is still hanging in there in the west.

Look for the distinct great square, actually a rectangle, that makes up the torso of the mighty flying horse.

With a good pair of binoculars or a small telescope, scan about halfway between Pegasus and the bright “W” that makes up the constellation Cassiopeia the Queen, and see if you can spot the Andromeda Galaxy.

It’s our Milky Way galaxy’s next-door neighbor. Honestly, all you’ll really see is a faint little smudge, but that little smudge is a whole other galaxy, a little larger than our own, nearly 2½ million light-years away. If you’re new to astronomy, one light-year equals almost 6 trillion miles.

I call the bright constellations in the eastern sky “Orion and his gang.” Orion is the brightest of the gang, and at first glance the mighty hunter looks like a sideways bow tie, but without too much imagination you can see how that bow tie resembles the torso of a very big man.

The three bright stars that make up Orion’s belt are in a perfect row and jump right out at you. There also are the bright stars Rigel at Orion’s knee, and Betelgeuse at his armpit.

By the way, keep your eye on this star because sometime in the next million years Betelgeuse could explode in a tremendous supernova explosion.

Elsewhere in Orion’s gang is Auriga, the retired chariot driver with the bright star Capella.

There’s also Taurus the bull with the little arrow pointing to the right, which outlines the face of the bull with the reddish star Aldebaran marking the angry red eye of the beast.

Just above Taurus are the Pleiades, a beautiful bright star cluster that resembles a tiny Big Dipper. The Pleiades Star Cluster is made up of more than 100 young stars, probably less than 100 million years old.

If you stay out after 8:30 p.m., you’ll see a really bright star on the rise in the southeast. That’s Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky at any time throughout the year.

If you draw a line through Orion’s belt and extend it to the lower left, it will point right at Sirius, a little more than 8 light-years away.

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 available at bookstores and at http://www.adventurepublications.net.