Provided by StarDate.org. Unless otherwise specified, viewing times are local time regardless of time zone, and are good for the entire Lower 48 states (and, generally, for Alaska and Hawaii).
Orion is in the east and southeast at nightfall. Bright orange Betelgeuse marks its left shoulder. Lambda Orionis, to the upper right of Betelgeuse, looks fainter, but it consists of two monster stars, one of which may be 200,000 times brighter than the Sun.
In ancient Greece and Rome, Orion was known as a mighty hunter. But in ancient Egypt, the figure was even mightier. It represented Osiris, the god of the underworld. In fact, Osiris was thought to reside in the stars of Orion's Belt.
The planet Saturn poses near the Moon the next couple of evenings. It looks like a bright golden star. It stands to the upper left of the Moon tonight, and a bit farther below the Moon tomorrow night.
Wezen, the third-brightest star of Canis Major, is about to dump huge supplies of chemical elements into space - everything from carbon and oxygen to silicon and iron. It will expel enough material to make several stars as massive as the Sun.
A "bubble" that represents the dying breath of a Sun-like star is on the edge of Gemini, which is well up in the east at nightfall. Known as the Medusa Nebula, the bubble is about 1,500 light-years away, and it spans more than four light-years.
The Moon reaches first-quarter at 10:47 p.m. CST. It lines up at a right angle to the line from Earth to the Sun, so sunlight illuminates half of the lunar hemisphere that faces our way.
As befits his status as a hero, Perseus strides boldly across the sky tonight. He is high overhead at nightfall, crowning the sky with a couple of streamers of moderately bright stars.
