To use this map, cut it out and attach it to a stiff backing. Hold it over your head and line up the compass points on the map to the points on the horizon. East and west on this map are not backward. Also use a small flashlight with a red piece of cloth or red construction paper over the lens. You won't lose your night vision when you look at this map in red light.

We have the best of all worlds looking out celestially from Butler this month.

March stargazing is fantastic because you still have Orion and all the great constellations of winter, the best of the year in my opinion, but you’re not going to freeze off any body parts.

One thing I don’t like is daylight-saving time begins March 9 and stargazing can’t really get started until 8 p.m. I love being able to stargaze right after supper.

Orion the Hunter and his gang of other stars and planets continue to light up the southern heavens. There’s Taurus the Bull; Auriga the Chariot Driver turned goat farmer; the big and little dogs Canis Major and Minor; Gemini the Twins; and of course, Orion the Hunter with his three perfectly aligned belt stars.

In addition to all those bright shiners is the brightest shiner of them all, the planet Jupiter. The largest planet in our family of planets starts out these March evenings nearly due south in the middle of the constellation Gemini the Twins.

Jupiter and Earth were at the closest point to each other around the start of this year when they were a little more than 390 million miles apart.

Since then, Jupiter and our planetary home have drifted apart in their orbits around the sun and are now almost 55 million miles farther apart. Because of that, Jupiter’s not quite as bright as it was and will be a little smaller in the eyepiece of your telescope. It’s still a great telescope target, even for smaller scopes because you can see the disk of the planet and its four brightest moons.

By the way, the Orion Nebula is also another great vista for your telescope. You’re witnessing an excited birth cloud of hydrogen gas with storms forming within it more than 1,500 light-years away with just one light-year equaling nearly six trillion miles.

With even a small scope you can see four stars arranged in a trapezoid pattern near the center of cloud that were born out of the Orion Nebula. One of the stars may be as young as 50,000 years old, which — believe or not — would make it a stellar infant!

In the north sky, the Big Dipper is standing up on its handle. The fainter Little Dipper is off to the left hanging by its handle.

The brightest star, Polaris, otherwise known as the North Star, shines at the end of the Little Dipper’s handle. Polaris is the “Lynch Pin” of the sky.

All of the stars in our sky appear to circle around the North Star every 24 hours because it shines directly above the Earth’s North Pole.

Over in the northwest sky, look for the bright sideways “W” that is supposed to be the outline of Queen Cassiopeia tied up in her throne. The story goes that Hera, queen of the Greek gods, was angry with Cassiopeia for boasting that she was more beautiful than the queen herself.

Hera tied her up in a throne and cast her up into the heavens, where to this day she continues her endless circle around Polaris.

In the east, look for a distinctive backward question mark that outlines the chest and head of Leo the Lion, one of the spring constellations. Regulus is the moderately bright star at the bottom of the question mark.

Leo will get higher in the sky in the early evening as the stars of Orion sink lower in the west. This is because Earth is starting to turn toward spring constellations and away from the wonderful stars of winter.

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.