Of all 65-plus constellations available in the heavens over Butler during the course of the year, some are bright and some are dim, some are big and some are small.

The springtime constellation Coma Berenices is both small and dim. Its one redeeming value is it's one of those few constellations that sort of looks like what it's supposed to be: locks of long flowing hair being tossed in a cosmic breeze.

I might be overselling this deep track constellation a bit, but look at it as a stargazing challenge. To see Coma Berenices in its true glory if you have a lot of city lighting might really be a challenge, but if can get away in the countryside or you're lucky enough to be out there anyway, I think you'll easily see the celestial locks.

With the help of aggressive imagination, Coma Berenices will resemble faint strands of hair flowing near the zenith after evening twilight. At about 10:30 p.m., when it's finally dark enough, look for it very high in the southwestern sky, just below the Big Dipper's handle.

A pair of binoculars always helps in seeking the heavenly hair.

The central attraction of the constellation Coma Berenices is what's known in the astronomy business as Melotte Star Cluster 111. This cluster makes up the celestial hair we see. It was first cataloged by the famous early astronomer Ptolemy around the year 138.

It's actually one of the closest star clusters to the Earth, at a little more than 250 light-years away. However, the heavenly hair isn't exactly down the block, because in miles, that works out to be 1,600 trillion miles away!

Like most open clusters, Coma Berenices is a very extended family of hundreds of stars that formed out of the same gaseous nebulae about 400 to 600 million years ago. Believe it or not, that makes these relatively young stars.

Now, these youthful shiners won't exactly spring from their nest on their own, but rather the nest will be ripped apart by gravity from other surrounding stars, and the adult stars will go their separate ways.

Just for fun and extra credit, take even a small telescope if you have one and pan around the vicinity of the Melotte Cluster and Coma Berenices.

You'll probably run into what I call little "fuzzies" here and there. Those little fuzzies are actually entire other galaxies of stars in a cluster of galaxies called the Virgo Cluster of Galaxies.

Some of these galaxies make our Milky Way look like a cosmic pipsqueak! While they might not make for a wonderful of vista, keep in mind you're looking at galaxies that are about 60 million light-years away, and remember, just one light-year equals nearly 6 trillion miles! Talk about far away places!

Coma Berenices is the only constellation named after an actual person.

Queen Berenices was the wife of Ptolemy III, a famous Egyptian Pharaoh who lived about 200 B.C. The story goes that the great Pharaoh was leading his troops into a fierce war. Queen Berenices was a very devoted spouse and prayed to the gods for his safe return. She was so desperate to see him again she promised to cut off all of her beautiful hair if her husband returned safe and sound.

About a year later, Ptolemy returned victorious, and true to her word, the queen cut off all her hair and dedicated it to the temple of Aphrodite, the goddess of love.

Just days later, sacrilegious souvenir-seeking scoundrels liberated Bernice's' hair out of the temple. When the hair heist was discovered, Ptolemy and Berenices were ready to roll some heads, literally!

All of the temple priests were within hours of execution when a traveling group of Greek consulting astronomers literally saved their necks. They convinced Ptolemy and Berenices to go out with them that night to see a brand new pale cluster of light high in the sky.

"Look!" they exclaimed, "do you not see the clustered curls of the queen's hair?"

They continued, "Aphrodite and the other gods believed that the queen's hair was just too beautiful for a single temple to possess. Berenices' hair belongs in the heavens for all to see!"

Much to the relief of the temple priests, Berenices and Ptolemy swallowed this line of bull. Consultants can be very convincing, even today!

Now, if you're taking in the heavenly hair Sunday night, you'll see a sweet conjunction between the new crescent moon and the bright planet Venus in the low western sky.

You'll want to check this out toward the end of evening twilight before you look for Coma Berenices so the moon doesn't get to low to see.

Venus will be hanging out just above the new thin crescent moon, and in fact, the crescent Moon will be so thin it'll sport what's called Earthshine. Nestled within the crescent moon, you should see the rest of the moon's disk bathed in dark gray as sunlight bounces off our Earth and onto our lunar neighbor.

Two other planets, Mars and Saturn, are a little higher up in the western sky to the upper left of and together with Venus, almost forming a straight line.

Mars has a definite reddish hue to it and is just more than 30 degrees to the upper left of Venus. That's about the width of three of your fist-widths held at arm's length.

About 25 degrees, or about two-and-a-half fist-widths to the upper left of Mars will be Saturn. Never pass up a chance to look at Saturn and its ring system through even a small telescope.

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