While the boys of summer have hit the baseball diamonds across America, the boys of winter are beginning their long goodbye in the western evening sky.

I’m referring to Gemini the Twins, one of the brighter constellations that’s been lighting up the winter heavens since December. Because of Earth’s never ending orbit around the sun, though, we’re turning away from that direction of space where the stars of Gemini are positioned.

When it’s finally dark enough this time of year, around 9:30 p.m., look in the high southwestern skies for two moderately bright stars right next to each other. These are Gemini’s brighter stars, Castor and Pollux.

To help locate them this spring you can use the very bright planet Jupiter that’s also residing in the high southwest. Castor and Pollux are the next brightest stars you can see just to the right of Jupiter.

Castor and Pollux are also the names of the two twins that make up Gemini, marking the heads of the twins. When it’s dark enough, you’ll see two slightly crooked lines of fainter stars below both Castor and Pollux that make up the rest of their bodies.

Gemini is one of the 65-plus constellations we see from Butler. Gemini is one of the few constellations that sort of looks like what it’s supposed to be. If your skies aren’t too lit up with heavy light pollution, Gemini looks like a pair of celestial stickmen.

The star Castor is one of the most interesting stars on the celestial stage. It looks like one star to the naked eye, but with modern telescopes astronomers have resolved Castor is actually a collection of six stars dancing around each other in a complex orbital pattern. If you lived on a planet in that system, you would have six sunrises and six sunsets every day.

Pollux is a single giant star, more than 10 times the diameter of our sun and a heck of a lot farther away at 34 light years, with just one light-year equaling almost six trillion miles.

With even a small telescope or a halfway decent pair of binoculars you should easily see Messier Object 35, otherwise known as M35. It’s a fairly bright open cluster of young stars huddled together nearly 3,000 light years away. They occupy about the same area in the sky as a full moon, which helps make it fairly easy to locate.

There’s no way you’ll see all of the stars with your telescope, but there are believed to be up to 10,000 stars that are about 160 million years old. Believe it or not, that makes them stellar toddlers.

According to Greek mythology, Castor and Pollux were the twin sons of Leda, the mortal queen of Sparta. However, they had two different fathers.

Castor’s father was Leda’s husband King Tyndarus, while Pollux was the love child of Leda and Zeus, the king of the Greek Gods. That made Castor a pure mortal but Pollux was a half god.

That fact of life didn’t stop the twin half-brothers, as strange as that sounds, from being the best of friends. They were inseparable.

As they grew into young men, Castor became an expert horseman and Pollux a champion boxer. But even though they had separate vocations, they remained very close.

One night though, when they were cruising the bars, there was trouble. They met a couple of ladies who they thought were available.

They bought them drinks and danced the night away. It was a wonderful time for all, that is, until their jealous boyfriends showed up.

Needless to say a rumble erupted and in the fight Castor was fatally stabbed with a sword. He tragically died a few hours later in the arms of Pollux.

Castor, being a mortal, went to the underworld at death. Pollux was beyond grief stricken. He deeply loved his brother and longed to see him again, but knew he never would because Pollux had the blood of a god in him and gods weren’t allowed in the underworld.

Zeus took pity on his son, and being he was head god on mount Olympus, he bent the rules and allowed Pollux to enter the underworld each day to see his dead brother.

Zeus was so impressed with this brotherly love he put the constellation Gemini in the skies as a tribute to his favorite sons. The boys of winter still shine in the 21st century.

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.