Stargazing is a great way to start your day, but the challenge is to roll out of the sack before the dawn's early light.

As a practice, I am up and running long before morning twilight, and I love it. On clear mornings, even in the dead cold of winter, I love to take at least five minutes of solitude out on my deck under the stars, admiring God's great universe. If you're up early enough, I highly recommend you make stargazing a part of your morning routine. A cup of coffee under the stars will help you put things in perspective.

Now that we're into autumn, you don't have to be up at a ridiculous hour to start your day under the great celestial dome. Morning twilight doesn't really get going until after 6:15, and as the month goes on, it won't get going until 6:45.

If you're short on time, I highly recommend you concentrate on the eastern half of the Butler sky. That's where all the action is. Even if you're stuck in heavy city lighting, you can't help but be amazed at all the bright stars and constellations.

These are the prime winter constellations, pretty much centered around the wonderful constellation Orion the Hunter. That's the one that always reminds me of an hourglass with the three bright stars in a row that make the neck of the time piece. Actually, the hourglass is the torso of Orion's body, and the three stars in a row make up his belt. This guy's built!

All of these wonderful winter constellations — the best of the year in my opinion — are seen in the evening from January through March, but we get a sneak preview in the morning this time of year. That's because we're facing the same direction in space we face during the evening in wintertime. The Earth's rotation on its axis and its orbit around the sun work together to make this happen.To make the eastern morning sky even more fun, the next several weeks will bring the opportunity to see four planets with the naked eye, with three of them in a close celestial tango.The planet off on its own is Mars, very high in the southeastern sky, not all that far from the overhead zenith. It's plenty bright right now, and you can easily see its copperish-red color. To make Mars even easier to locate Monday morning, it will be just to the upper right of the last quarter moon. On Tuesday morning, the moon will be farther to the lower left of Mars, but still close enough to find one of our nearest solar system neighbors. We'll get an even a better look at Mars as the Earth and Mars make their closest approach to each other since 2007 at the end of January. Stay tuned for more on that.Around 6:30 a.m. three more planets — Saturn, Mercury and Venus — will be bopping around each other in the low eastern sky, and you'll easily spot them.Because of their individual orbits around the sun and the fact that all the planets in our solar system circle the sun in nearly the same plane, occasionally we'll get multiple planets in the same line of sight in our sky that will dance around each other. They're a heck of a long way from each other physically, but they can appear to be awfully close to each other in the sky.This week, Venus and Saturn are in a real celestial hug, with the two planets separated by less than one-half of a degree on Tuesday morning as Venus passes by Saturn. You can easily see the two planets in the same field of view if you point your binoculars their way.

Meanwhile, Mercury is just about five degrees to the lower right of the smooching Venus and Saturn. Later on this week, the waning crescent moon will join the planetary trio. On Thursday morning, the moon will be just a little to the upper right of the planets, but on Friday, it will make some really nice morning eye candy when the thinning moon is parked just to the right of Venus.You also might see something called Earthshine on the moon on both Thursday and Friday mornings. The bright, white crescent is lit up by direct sunlight hitting that part of the moon, but the rest of the disk of the moon might sport a pale gray hue as it's picking up secondhand sunshine bouncing off the fairly reflective Earth and on to the moonNo worries if you don't have a telescope. This will mainly be a naked eye show in the morning this week. Venus, the brightest of the three planets by far, is covered completely by a thick poisonous cloud cover. About all you'll see will be an oval-ish white light. Mercury will pretty much just be a red dot since it's so small. Saturn, though, will be a little more appealing even though it's the farthest away — more than 960 million miles distant — because it's a much larger planet and it possesses that beautiful ring system. Unfortunately, Saturn's ring system is still pretty much on edge from our view on Earth, making Saturn look like a white disk with a stick running through it. On top of all that, all three planets will be barely above the horizon, forcing us to see them through a thicker coating of Earth's atmosphere.So start your day out right this week with a clear starry morning, a cup of coffee or hot cocoa with marshmallows as you get in touch with the universe. You'll love it!<B><I>Mike Lynch is an amateur astronomer and professional broadcast meteorologist for WCCO Radio in Minneapolis and is author of the book, "Pennsylvania Starwatch," available at bookstores and at his Web site www.lynchandthestars.com.</I></B>