On Monday, the star cluster will "pop out" from behind the moon.

This coming Monday night do all you can to keep the skies clear … Say your prayers, send positive vibes skyward and if necessary get together in small groups to blow any clouds away.

The moon will dance in front of seven little dazzlers Monday night between 9 p.m. and just before 1 a.m. Tuesday morning. I guarantee you'll like what you see, even if you're not all that into astronomy.

The Pleiades, otherwise known as the seven little sisters, is the best and brightest star cluster in the sky. At first glance the Pleiades look like a miniature Big Dipper with most people seeing about six to seven stars. With a pair of binoculars or a small telescope, though, you can see many fainter stars in this extended stellar family more than 2,300 trillion miles away.

As the moon orbits the Earth every 27.3 days it goes through its regular phases, changing its shapes as well as rising and setting at different times through the month.

Last Friday night the moon was full and the side of the moon we can see from our worldly home was bathed in full sunlight. At that time the Earth lay roughly in a line between the Sun and the moon.

Just in the last 24 hours, the moon has progressed over 25,000 miles in its orbit around the Earth and so the entire disk of the moon is no longer in sunlight. Because the moon has no light of its own, we only see about three quarters to two thirds of the moon early this week.

That football-shaped moon is called a waning gibbous that rises later and later each successive evening and will eventually appear as a half-moon by the end of the week.

As the moon circles us, it also migrates eastward about 13 degrees, or about one of its widths every hour. The exact path among the stars varies from month to month because of the complicated orbital mechanics of both the moon around the Earth and the Earth around the sun.

This month our lunar companion just happens to be crossing in front of the Pleiades. Monday night, just before 9:30 p.m., the sunlit eastern edge of the moon will begin to cover up stars of the Pleiades. By about 10:45, the moon will be smack dab over the seven little sisters, and by 1 a.m., the western edge of the moon will be retreating from the cluster.

Make sure you get a hold of least some binoculars or a small telescope to watch this show up close and personal. As the leading edge of the moon comes in "contact" with the Pleiades, the stars will gradually wash out in the glare of the moonlight as they disappear behind it. The real eye-catcher, though, is when the stars emerge from behind the moon. That should be more impressive because they'll "pop" out from the darkened western edge of the moon. That's because the moon has no atmosphere and the stars are just points of light since they're so far way. It'll be like watching stellar popcorn jumping out from behind our lunar neighbor!

Again, it'll be a wonderful night for a moon dance Monday night. It's worth losing sleep over!

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