And once the sky is dark enough, spot the Pleiades above Venus. ■ By now Mercury is in easy view in late twilight, far to the lower right of Venus as indicated in the scene below. Spot Arcturus three fists to their upper left during evening. They cross the sky together through the night, slowly drawing farther apart. ■ The Moon, a day past full, rises in late twilight with Spica about 4° or 5° to its upper right. After dark, look for Spica below it and brighter Arcturus several times farther to the Moon's left. Brilliant Sirius in Canis Major is below, and Procyon in Canis Minor is high above. ■ At this time of year, the two Dog Stars stand vertically aligned around the end of twilight. The belt points left toward Sirius and right toward Aldebaran and, farther on, the Pleiades. ■ Right after dark, Orion is still well up in the southwest in his spring orientation: striding down toward the right, with his belt horizontal. But if you draw a line through its middle from Capella to Sirius, the "Hexagon" is fairly symmetric with respect to that axis. From there look higher upper right for Pollux and Castor (lined up nearly horizontal), lower right from Castor to dim Beta Aurigae and then bright Capella, lower left from there to Aldebaran, lower left to Rigel at the bottom of Orion, and back to Sirius. Start with brilliant Sirius in the southwest, the Hexagon's lower left corner. It's the biggest widely-recognized asterism. ■ The huge, bright Winter Hexagon is still in view early after dark, filling the sky to the southwest and west. This time it's to their lower left and farther away from them. ■ Now the Moon forms a different nearly isosceles triangle with Regulus and Algieba. ■ The waxing gibbous Moon shines in Leo, again forming an isosceles triangle with Regulus below it (in early evening) and Gamma Leonis (Algieba) to the Moon's left. Moreover, for telescope users, it's accompanied by a distant, tight pair of red dwarfs: Capella H and L, magnitudes 10 and 13. It consists of two yellow giant stars orbiting each other every 104 days. ■ Capella's pale-yellow color matches that of the Sun, meaning they're both about the same temperature. But Capella is a very close runner-up to Arcturus! Spot it high in the northwest. These are the two brightest stars in the sky at the time. daylight-saving time, depending on both your latitude and your longitude. Their heights will exactly balance sometime around 10 or 11 p.m. ■ There comes a time now in late evening when Arcturus, the bright Spring Star climbing in the east, stands just as high as Sirius, the brighter Winter Star descending in the southwest.
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