Today:
Orion is an easy target, even on a moonlit night. Tonight, the lack of moonlight might give you an opportunity to see a fainter feature of our winter Giant. Look below his three belt stars, where a fainter line marks his sword. The very end of the sword is a little fuzzy, because it is not a star but a vast region of glowing gas and dust, called a nebula.
Thursday:
By 8:30 PM this evening, the “twin” stars of Gemini appear quite high in the east-southeast, two-thirds of the way up from the horizon, and ride very high across the southern skies. Pollux, a bit brighter and on the lower left, and Castor, on the upper right, are named for the sons of the Greek god Zeus and his mortal lover, Leda.
Friday:
The most distant object human eyes can see, the Andromeda galaxy, appears as a faint smudge of light, one half of the way above the west-northwest horizon, as twilight ends after 7 o’clock this evening. It appears between the stars of Andromeda, and her mother, Cassiopeia. A pair of binoculars will help.