Through the course of the year, our Butler skies are adorned by about 70 constellations. There are great magnificent constellations like Orion the Hunter that's still hanging in the western sky or Ursa Major the Big Bear shining brightly upside down in the high northeast.

And then there are not so majestic ones like Corvus the crow. Actually, it's really a poor excuse for a constellation, but while it doesn't have a wow factor, it's still one of my favorite constellations. Even though it's small, it's distinct and pretty easy to find.

Look for a lopsided trapezoid or diamond of moderately bright stars hanging a little above the southeastern horizon just after evening twilight.

In the minds many early cultures, that crooked diamond is supposed to be a crow. If you can see it as a crow, more power to you. Imagination needs to be stretched to the fullest!

There's also nothing really that astronomically significant about Corvus.

Gienah, on the upper right corner, is the brightest star in the stellar crow. In fact, it's an Arabic name which translates to English as “the right wing of the crow.” It appears to the naked eye as a single star but in fact it's believed by most astronomers to be a binary star system, two stars revolving closely around each other about 165 light-years away.

Just one light-year equals nearly six trillion miles! The light we see from Gienah binary left those stars in 1848, long before American Civil War began.

If you have a medium to larger telescope you might get a look at the Antennae Galaxy, about 45 million light-years away. It's actually a merger of two clashing galaxies that have taken on heart shape. It's called the Antennae because of two tidal tails that emerge from the ends of the two galaxies. It's located just to the right of the Corvus trapezoid.

Through the ages, crows have really gotten a bad rap, but they're one of the smartest birds around. This certainly is reflected in a lot of the mythology related to the constellation Corvus.

In Norse mythology, one yarn is centered around the god Odin, who had at his command a pair of crows named Hugin and Munin. They served as Odin's eyes and ears as they flew around the world gathering the latest news. CNN was still a few years off. At the end of every day the dynamic crow duo sat on Odin's shoulders and put on a private newscast to their master.In Roman mythology, crows were actually the more respected birds on Earth. Back then they were highly intelligent, sang a beautiful song and had bright white feathers with gold trim. They served the gods and goddesses on Mount Olympus with great distinction, but things went terribly wrong for Corvus and all of crow-kind.One myth has Corvus clearly being in the crossfire of a broken love affair.The mighty god Apollo was quite a lover and had quite a stable of girlfriends. One of them was Coronis, who was pregnant with supposedly Apollo's child, but the god of the sun wasn't absolutely sure he was the daddy. So he had his faithful crow Corvus spy on Coronis to see just how faithful she was.Sure enough, Corvus discovered that Coronis was actually also in love with a mortal man, Ischys.Corvus was fearful of informing Apollo of his discovery because he was well aware of his master's horrible temper. So Corvus sat on his information for a while before finally telling Apollo the bad news.Just as Corvus feared, Apollo really lost it when the truth was revealed to him. Not only was he furious with Coronis but he flew off the handle accusing Corvus of not doing all he could to stop the affair even though that wasn't his mission.Nevertheless, Apollo flung a curse on not only Corvus but all crows, scorching their white feathers to the jet black color we see to this day. He also collectively turned all the crow's beautiful singing voices into the caw caw we hear today. Talk about burning the messenger!When you get a look at the constellation Corvus, as unimpressive as it is, or see any crow flying around trying to scratch a living, think of poor Corvus and all the other crows that got a raw deal from Apollo. Shame on you sun god!Celestial huggingThis coming Thursday and Friday morning in the pre-morning twilight there will be a nice conjunction in the low western sky between the full moon and the planet Saturn.On Thursday, the moon will be parked just below Saturn. On Friday, our lunar neighbor will be just to the left of Saturn.The ringed wonder of our solar system and our Earth are just about their closest approach to each other for 2013, separated by less than 820 million miles.Even with a small telescope you can clearly see the extensive ring system that stretches more than 120,000 miles in diameter. Don't miss the moon smooching with Saturn!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 at www.adventurepublications.net.