Happy springtime!

Winter, or least the astronomical winter, is history. The vernal equinox took place Friday. From now until late June, the sun will take longer and higher arcs from east to west across the sky as it crosses into the northern half for the first time since last September. Summer isn’t far away.

Even though it’s spring, Orion and the rest of the winter constellations are still shining brightly in the southwestern Butler sky.

There’s the big guy himself with three bright stars in a row that make up the hermit hunter’s belt.

Orion’s brightest star is Rigel, marking Orion’s left knee, and Betelgeuse at the other corner, marking Orion’s armpit. Betelgeuse is an Arabic name that roughly translates in English to “armpit of the great one.”

Astronomically, Betelgeuse is a very significant star. It’s a super red giant star that at times bulges out to nearly a billion miles in diameter.

On the southern and western side of Orion’s gang of winter shiners are his hunting dogs; the constellations Canis Major and Canis Minor. Canis Major kind of looks like a dog standing on his hind legs, with the very bright Sirius marking the big dog’s snout.

Sirius is the brightest star in the night sky. It’s so bright because it’s relatively close to Earth, at least as far as stars go. Sirius is a little more than eight-and-half light years or about fifty trillion miles away, and believe it or not that is chump change when it comes to stellar distances.

Canis Minor, Orion’s little dog, is a joke of a constellation. All there is to it is basically two stars next to each other, a bright one and a dim one.

The bright one is Procyon, 11.5 light years away, and is the next brightest star you see to the upper left of Sirius. The dimmer star to the upper right of Procyon is Gomeisa, and that is Canis Minor. At my astronomy programs and parties, I refer to it as Orion’s little wiener dog.

Orion and the winter dogs are not long for our evening sky because one big kitty cat is chasing them. The best constellation of the spring skies, Leo the Lion, is on the prowl, climbing higher and higher in the southeast evening sky in pursuit of the mighty hunter and the pooches of winter.

Leo is one of the few constellations that really resembles what it’s supposed to be. The right side looks just like a backward question mark. It’s not hard to imagine that as the profile of the chest and head of a mighty lion.

To the lower left of the backward question mark are three stars that form a distinct triangle that allegedly outlines the tail and hind quarters of the celestial lion.

According to Greek mythology, Leo was the king of the king of all beasts. Not only is Leo a behemoth lion, but his hide is so tough that not even the sharpest sword at full thrust could pierce it.

As tough of a hunter as Orion was, along with his tenacious dogs, at least Canis Major that is, they were no match for this big kitty.

Rather than fight this fierce feline, Orion and his posse escape certain death by heading out of the spring evening skies, running steadily from night to night toward the western horizon. By about late May, the great winter hunter and his doggies are completely gone from the night sky.

This annual chase is reenacted every spring and we can thank the Earth’s orbit around the sun for making this happen.

As our home planet circles the sun, the nighttime side of the Earth faces different directions in space and different constellations. As this happens, we on Earth watch pretty much all of the stars shift westward from night to night. That’s why we have different sets of constellations from season to season.

Getting back to Leo’s pursuit of the great winter constellations, the beast has a little help this spring from the very bright planet Jupiter, named after the Roman king of the gods. Jupiter is actually leading the westward chase ahead of Leo and without a doubt is adding to the intimidation felt by Orion,

Jupiter, currently about 430 million miles away, is the brightest starlike object in the eastern half of the evening sky.

The largest planet in our solar system is a wonderful telescope target, even if you have a smaller scope. You should easily resolve the disk of the planet with your telescope and maybe some of the darker cloud bands that stripe the largest planet in our solar system.

You’ll see up to four of its larger “Galilean” moons that circle the great planet in periods of 2 to 17 days. Some nights you can’t see all four because one or more of them may be behind Jupiter or lost in the glow in the foreground of the giant planet.

Make sure you take long continuous views of Jupiter and its moons, or any other celestial target for that matter.

A good three to five minute view is best so your eye can adjust to the light level in your eyepiece. The longer you look, the more detail you should see.

Celestial hugging

Jupiter may be dominating the southeastern evening sky, but an even brighter planet, Venus, pops out of the evening twilight in the low western sky.

This Sunday night the new crescent moon will be parked just to the left of Venus and should be a tremendous must see celestial event. Pray for clear skies.

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 online at www.adventurepublications.net.