Early sunset gives more time to look

With the end of daylight saving time Sunday it’ll be dark enough much earlier in the evening.

You can make the stars your old friends in our Butler sky and still get a very good night’s sleep, but the trade off is that you need to bundle up a little bit more and be prepared to have your lungs take in some cooler November air. It’s worth it, though, as your eyes will take in some great celestial sights!

The bright planet Jupiter is still dominating the evening in the eastern sky. While it’s still the brightest starlike object in the sky it’s a little farther from us than it was in September, but it’s still less than 400 million miles away. That means Jupiter is still a great telescope target, even if your scope isn’t all that big.

You should easily see the disk of the largest planet in our solar system, at least some of its cloud bands, and its four largest moons that orbit the big guy in periods of two to 17 days. Depending on where they are around Jupiter, you may not see all four moons.

One or more of them may be hiding behind the planet or lost in the glare in front of it. It’s fun to watch their changing positions from night to night.

Even though it’s still autumn, some of the early bright constellations of winter are already rising on the great celestial stage.

First off, you can’t help but see a beautiful little star cluster shining brightly in the low eastern sky, resembling a tiny dipper. It’s not the Little Dipper. That’s in the high northern sky.

What you’re witnessing is the Pleiades star cluster, the best naked eye star cluster in the night sky. See how many stars you can see in it with the naked eye. Can you see six? If you can your eyes are about average. If you can see seven stars you’ve really been eating your carrots! If you can see more than seven, you have super vision or you’re just kidding yourself.

A lot of you may know The Pleiades star cluster by its nickname, “The Seven Little Sisters.” Believe me though, there are a lot more than seven shiners there.

With just an average pair of binoculars you may see over a hundred stars! The Pleiades are a group of young stars almost 2,400 trillion miles away that were born together about 100 million years ago.

In the southeastern sky you can see the Great Square of Pegasus, the torso of the wonderful constellation Pegasus the Winged Horse. The Square actually looks like a diamond since it is turned diagonally to our view.

You can see a long arced line of stars coming off the star that’s on the left corner of the diamond/square. That arc makes up the wing of the big celestial horse.

In the western sky there are still some summer constellations to be visually had.

Among the brighter ones are Cygnus the Swan, Lyra the Harp and Aquila the Eagle. We won’t see them for too much longer because as our Earth orbits the sun, these stars of summer will gradually set earlier and earlier in the evening.

Instructions for using the star map

To use the 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 compass points on the horizon where you’re observing from.

East and West on this map are not backward. This is not a misprint. I guarantee that when you hold this map over your head, east and west will be in their proper positions.

Also use a small flashlight and attach a red piece of cloth or red construction paper over the lens of the flashlight. You won’t lose your night vision when you look at this map in red light.

Mike Lynch is an amateur astronomer and professional broadcast meteorologist for WCCO Radio in Minneapolis and is the author of the book, “Pennsylvania Starwatch,” available at bookstores and at his website www.lynchandthestars.com.