Today:
The Summer Triangle is slowly bidding farewell as it rests in the west-northwest, its three bright stars spanning the Milky Way, or the “Great River in the Sky” as it’s known in the Orient. Our galaxy arches from the west up to the top and then down to the eastern horizon.
Tuesday:
Rising at 7:00 PM EST this evening is the first of the two “dog stars”. Procyon literally means to “precede”, as in preceding the Canis Major, the Great Dog. Procyon is the brightest star in the Little Dog, leading the way one half hour later for the brilliant Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky, rising farther to the southeast about 7:30 PM.
Wednesday:
This year’s Christmas Eve sky features a decorative waxing Crescent Moon emerging one quarter of the way up in the southwest in the late moments of twilight between 5 and 5:30, while the western skies give us a lovely view of an out-of-season pattern, the Summer Triangle, still nearly hafl way up from the horizon. By 8 o’clock, the Triangle’s highest star, Deneb, appears at the top of the Northern Cross, and alternative name for Cygnus, the Swan, appearing to “stand” on the horizon.