There will be a lot of Halloween characters roaming around your neighborhood on Wednesday night, but Halloween will hang on in the night skies over Butler all this week and over the next few weeks.

There's no great pumpkin in the night sky, but there is a bright planet with a distinctly orange-red glow. That's Mars shining brightly in the southern sky as darkness sets in and the spooks start lurking about.

Mars isn't nearly as bright as it was in August and September, but it's the brightest starlike object in the early evening celestial theater. Currently Mars is almost 130 million miles from Earth, almost 100 million miles farther away than it was at the end of July when it was the closest it's been to Earth in 15 years.

By the way, Mars is orange-red because of iron that's rusted within its dusty surface. I wish I could give you a more sinister reason befitting this week of Halloween.

There are some sinister shiners on the rise in the northeast sky. It's the famous, or some would say infamous Pleiades Star Cluster, also known as the “Seven Little Sisters.”

This time of year it's also referred to as the “Halloween Cluster” because it rises in the northeast early in the evening and climbs high in the sky over Butler around the midnight hour.

You can't miss it, as it's easily visible to the naked eye, resembling a miniature Big Dipper. Astronomically, the Pleiades is actually a group of over 100 young stars, more than 410 light years away, that were born together out of a huge cloud of hydrogen gas 100 million years ago.

By the way, if you're new to this column, just one light-year equals nearly 6 trillion miles.

Many ancient peoples worshipped and feared the Pleiades because the cluster was associated with death. When it rose high in the sky around midnight this time of year, it was thought to be the appropriate time to honor the dead. Some cultures, like the early Egyptians, believed that whenever the Pleiades reached their zenith in the sky, natural disasters as well as manufactured ones like war could more easily occur.

Probably the most sinister constellation on the rise is just above and to the left of the Pleiades, Perseus the Hero. Now Perseus himself is not all that scary, but it's the monster's head he's toting with him, the evil Medusa, that gives me the shivers.

According to Greek and Roman mythology, the king of the gods dispatched Perseus to rid the countryside of the Medusa, a lady monster who was literally stoning everyone.

Medusa was truly one of the most horrible monsters you ever saw. In fact, you couldn't even look at this beast with a female face that always had a bad hair day. That's because her hair consisted of dozens of poisonous snakes sticking out of her head.

If Medusa came into your neighborhood you didn't have to worry about multiple snakebites, because you'd be long gone before they ever got to you. Medusa was so ugly that if you even took a brief glance at her, you would instantly turn to stone.

Medusa had to be stopped before all of humanity became stone cold. Perseus went in pursuit of the horrible monster. Armed with the wings of Mercury, the messenger of the gods, and the magic shield of Athena, the goddess of wisdom, he managed to kill Medusa by slicing off her snake ridden head with his razor sword without actually looking at it the monster himself.

Don't ask me how he pulled that off. It must have been Athena's magical shield.

To honor Perseus, the gods and goddesses placed his body in the stars as the constellation we see rising this Halloween week. With a little imagination you can kind of see a crooked stickman about halfway between the horizon and the overhead zenith in the northeastern skies. The Pleiades are just off his feet. As you look at the constellation be careful, however, because he's still holding up Medusa's severed head, marked by the fairly bright star Algol.

Be extra careful looking at that star. I want you around to eat that Halloween candy that's left over around your house.

Algol is also known as the “Demon Star” because it actually blinks as it dims in brightness. It's certainly not a strobe light because it only dims about every three days and stays dim for about nine hours before it brightens up again.

Astronomically it's known as an eclipsing binary variable star. It's actually a three-star system, but two of the larger stars are eclipsing each other in their nearly three-day orbit around one another.

There's also a minor meteor shower starting up later this haunted week called the Taurids. They actually peak out in early November, but they're getting going this week.

The Earth, in its path around the sun, is running into a fairly sparse debris trail left behind by Comet Encke. Most of this debris is no bigger than pebble size, but when the pieces slam into our atmosphere at over 65,000 mph they really light up the sky.

You probably won't see many of them while you're taking the kids out trick-or- treating, though. They're best seen after midnight, originating from the constellation Taurus the Bull. But be careful after midnight because that's when it can really get spooky around Halloween.

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