Without a doubt, you can't help but be wowed by all of the bright winter constellations adorning the Butler southeastern sky.

Orion and his gang of winter star patterns are in firm control of the evening sky and I promise to write more about them in the coming weeks. I have a little unfinished business concerning one of the autumn constellations still hanging high in the western sky, however.

The constellation Aries the Ram is a small and quite honestly not all that impressive specimen of a constellation, but despite that I've always had a soft celestial spot in my heart for the diminutive Aries.

Locating Aries is a bit of a challenge, but what helps is that it's very high in the sky. Around 7 to 8 p.m. stand so that you're facing south as best you can and crank your eyes almost up to the overhead zenith.

You'll see a bunch of bright stars in a tight, bright, little cluster that kind of looks like a tiny Big Dipper. That's the famous Pleiades star cluster. A family of very young stars well over 2,300 trillion miles away!

Anyway, about 20 degrees or about two fist-widths at arm's length to the right of the Pleiades, you'll find Aries, the little ram.

The actual constellation Aries is made up of is two moderately bright stars and a dim star that looks like the horn of a ram. The two brighter stars are Hamel and Sheratan, and the dimmer star off to the lower right is Mesarthim.

Hamel is a giant star in our Milky Way Galaxy, more than 850 trillion miles or 66 light-years away from Earth. It's 37 times larger than our own sun and more than 426 times as bright.

Even though Aries the Ram is a tiny constellation it has a big story. Aries used to be the backdrop constellation the sun was in when it crossed into the northern sky. This happened on the first day of spring around March 21st, called the Vernal Equinox. Because of the wobble in the Earth's axis, the constellation Aries is no longer in the background during the equinox. It's been replaced by the constellation Pisces the Fish.

The Greek mythological story of Aries the ram is a sweet one. It kind of reminds me of the old Lassie TV show. Zeus, the king of gods, had a pet ram that he named Aries. He was a grand ram with a coat made of golden fleece. Aries also had wings so he could soar the skies above Mount Olympus.

One day Zeus and one of his many girlfriends were having a picnic in a lush valley at the foot of Olympus, when out of the distance he could hear Apollo, the god of the sun, shouting at him from high in the sky.

The god of the sun noticed that two small children about 10 miles away were about to be eaten by a lion. The children had slipped away from their mother at a market and were in some nearby brush, about to become lion lunch.

Zeus was in a good mood that day and he knew that his pet ram loved kids. So Zeus pointed Aries in the right direction and sent him flying off on a rescue mission.

The lion was within 20 feet of bagging the kids when out of the blue Aries swooped from the sky like a cruise missile. He scooped up the children on his back and flew them off to safety. Aries winged his way back to the local market place and reunited the youngsters with their greatly relieved mother.

For the rest of his life Aries set out on missions of mercy and rescue. When Aries died, Zeus rewarded him for his bravery and placed his body into the heavens to become the constellation we see today.

The little ram did a lot of good!

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.