To use this 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's horizon to the actual direction you're facing. East and west on this map are not backwards. 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.

The stargazing dilemma we face around here is that the very best skies for stargazing are found either in the cold of winter or the late nights and mosquitoes of summer.

The great, legendary stars and constellations of winter are gradually drifting off to the west as the Earth in its orbit turns away from that direction in space. Over in the east are the constellations of spring, which just don't have the glitter and eye candy of the winter stars.

Gazing to the west is the great frame of Orion the Hunter, leaning to the right, and every night as soon as it gets dark enough you'll notice that it's getting closer and closer to the western horizon along with all the bright constellations surrounding him.

They include Taurus the Bull, Auriga the Chariot Driver turned goat farmer, Gemini the Twins, and Canis Major and Minor, Orion's big and small hunting dogs. By the middle of May, most of these constellations will already be below the horizon at the beginning of nightfall. They'll be back in the evening skies next fall, showing up in the east around late October and early November.

The planet Saturn is among the winter constellations fading away into the western sky. But the good news for viewers of the ringed wonder of the solar system — it starts the evening in the high southern sky, perfect for viewing.

It's over 817 million miles away from Earth at the start of this month, over 60 million miles farther away then it was in early February, but still very much worth your time looking at through a telescope.

With the naked eye it'll look like a fairly bright star but using even the modest of scopes you should clearly see the division between the planet and the ring system and you might also see little moons swarming Saturn. The brightest and largest of them is Titan, the one the Huygens spacecraft landed on in January 2005.

If you make a late night of stargazing this month, you'll notice a very bright star rising in the east. That's actually Jupiter, the king of planets.

As you look in the eastern half of the April evening skies, there's definitely less to see with just a glance, but if you dig a little, there's celestial treasure. Very high in the southern sky after twilight, look for the giant backward question mark that outlines the chest and head of Leo the Lion. The brightest star at the bottom of the question mark is Regulus, which resides at the lion's heart.

Just to the left of the backward question mark is a small but distinct triangle that allegedly outlines the lion's tail and rear end.

Over in the low southeast there's a crooked square that's supposed to be Corvus the Crow. Good luck seeing that as a crow. In the low eastern sky look for a giant kite rising on its side with a red orange tinted star, Arcturus, at the tail of the kite. This is the constellation Bootes the hunter farmer.

One of the mythological stories about Bootes is that his body was placed in the sky as the constellation we see by the gods of Mount Olympus as a reward for inventing the first ox-pulled plow.

The bright star Arcturus at the tail is the 10th-brightest star we can see in Pennsylvania's night skies. It's over 197 trillion miles from our backyards tonight and almost 70 times as big as our home star, the sun.

By the way, the light we see from Arcturus tonight left that star back in 1972 when Nixon was still our president. Arcturus is a shooting star in the true sense of the word. It's blasting through our part of the galaxy at almost 100 miles a second! Since the time of ancient Greece, Arcturus has moved about the width of the full moon from its present position among the stars.

In the high northern sky, the highlight is the Big Dipper that is turning upside down. One of the old yarns about the Big Dipper is that one of the reasons we have more rain in the springtime is that the Dipper, being upside down, is pouring more celestial moisture into our skies, adding to the rainfall.

In my other life as a meteorologist, this is not one of my main forecasting tools, but it is a lot of fun to talk about. The Big Dipper is technically not a constellation but the bright rear end and tail of the constellation Ursa Major, the Big Bear.

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

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