As I said last week, despite the colder weather I believe that this is one of the best times to stargaze in our Butler skies.

The winter air is dryer and more transparent and so stars shine a lot brighter and your view of the celestial dome is much more pristine, especially if you can get out in rural areas, away from the shopping centers and strip malls and other sources of light pollution.

I got chance to do that last Friday night and it was so magical and good for the soul. To add to the great view this time of year you have some really wonderful bright stars and constellations.

Orion and his gang of adjoining luminous constellations jump out at you, even if you’re looking through light pollution.

This week, though, no matter where you look into the universe the full or nearly full moon will washout the skies greatly diminishing all but the brighter members on our celestial stage. So this week I want to touch on the five brightest shiners in our night sky in 2012.

The brightest of the brightest, of course, is the moon which will be officially full on Tuesday night. Every night this week it’ll start the evening a little farther to the east than it did the previous evening. That’s because of the moon’s 27.3 day orbit around the Earth. From night to night it finds itself against a different backdrop of stars.

On Sunday night our lunar companion will be among some of the brighter winter stars. As it starts out the evening in the southeast, the star Procyon, the brightest star in the constellation Canis Minor, the Little Dog, will be just off to the lower right of the moon.

To the upper left of the moon will be a pair of stars, Castor and Pollux, the brightest members of the constellation Gemini the Twins. Castor, just above Pollux is not what it appears to be.

To the naked eye and even with moderate to large amateur telescopes, Castor looks like a single star but closer observation with much more sophisticated astronomical tools reveals that it’s actually a system of five or maybe even six stars about 50 light years away. They are revolving around each other in an extremely complicated array of orbits.

Actually this is not that uncommon. In fact, way more than half of the stars we see in our night sky that appear as single stars are actually multiple star systems. Lone Ranger stars like our sun are the exception.

The second bright luminary of 2012 is the planet Venus. Even in the most light polluted skies Venus leaps out at you in the southwest well before the end of evening twilight.

Venus and the Earth are now separated by about 93 million miles, which coincidently is about the distance between the Earth and the sun.

Venus and our world will draw even closer to each other as winter evolves into spring. Venus and the Earth are about the same size, about 8,000 miles in diameter, but that’s about the only thing they have in common.

Venus is the hell hole of our solar system. It’s completely covered by a thick and poisonous cloud of carbon dioxide with sulfuric acid and other toxins.

Beneath the cloud, temperatures at the surface exceed 800 degrees in places. Venus’ highly reflective cloud cover is what makes it so bright, but honestly even with a large backyard telescope it’s pretty boring.

There’s just not that much to see except for the fact that it goes through shape changes like our moon. Right now it’s ovalish, resembling a gibbous moon.

In third place is Jupiter which isn’t all that far away from Venus in the southwestern sky as evening commences.

In fact, from now into mid March Venus and Jupiter will be drawing closer and closer to each other in our heavens and will make for a quite a sight.

Right now, Jupiter is about 35 degrees or a little more than three fist widths at arms length to the upper left of Venus. On March 13th they’ll be only three degrees apart in a delightful celestial hug.

In the coming weeks it’ll be a lot of fun watching the two luminaries come together and great activity to share with younger kids.

Even though they’re close together in the heavens, they’re nowhere near each other physically. Jupiter’s more that 400 million miles farther away than Venus, but it shines nearly as bright because it’s by far the largest planet in our solar system with a diameter of 88,000 miles.

Unlike Venus it’s anything but boring through even a small telescope. You can clearly see the disk of this behemoth world and maybe see some of its brighter cloud bands. For sure you can see up to four of Jupiter’s brighter moons that dance around the king of the planets in periods of two to 17 days. They look like tiny stars that appear in different positions from night to night on either side of Jupiter.

If you can’t see all four at any given time, it’s because one or more of them are either in front of Jupiter lost in the glare or temporally hiding behind the planet. By the way, Jupiter’s so big that if it were hollow it could hold more than 1,200 Earths.

The fourth brightest object in the celestial hit parade this year is the only star in the top five. It’s Sirius, the brightest star in our night sky. It’s also the brightest star in the winter constellation Canis Major, The Big Dog, that’s just to the lower left of Orion in the evening southern skies. In fact the three stars that make up the belt of Orion point right at it.

Check out the full February star map on my website lynchandthestars.com or pull up star maps on free programs like Stellarium and you’ll see what I mean. Sirius is so bright because it’s so close, only about 50 trillion miles away, which, believe it or not, is close at least astronomically.

It’s the fifth closest star to the Earth. I’ll have more to say about Sirius later this month in Starwatch when I feature both the constellation Canis Major and Minor, Orion’s faithful doggies.

In fifth place for brightness is the planet Mars that rises in the east a little after 8:30 p.m. and is high enough in the sky for decent viewing by about 9:30 p.m.

Even with the naked eye it’s distinctly red. It’s so bright right now because it’s nearing its closest approach to Earth in two years. It’s about 70 million miles away right now and by early next month it’ll only be about 63 million miles away.

Even with this close of a pass, Mars doesn’t show that much surface detail with most backyard telescopes since it’s only 4,000 miles in diameter. If seeing conditions are right, you may notice through the eyepiece of your telescope that the lower right side of the tiny disk of Mars has a white hue to it. If you see it, you’re looking at one of Mars’ frozen polar caps.

The polar cap is on the lower right side of Mars, assuming that your telescope — like most of them — gives you an inverted, upside down view.

If you see things right side up in your scope look for the polar cap on the upper left side of Mars. Either way, it’ll be a bit challenging to see but at least fun trying.