A Pair of Clusters
The stars of winter are gathering in the growing darkness, with Taurus rising in the east around 7pm. Its brightest star, Aldebaran, marks the bull’s eye. From there, look a few degrees higher for the Hyades star cluster, and from there look another 10 degrees up for the more renown Pleiades cluster. Orion trails the bull, rising around 8:30pm, followed by Pegasus. Far to the west, in a barren section of sky, is fall’s brightest star, Fomalhaut.
By dawn, Orion and crew are high in the west, while to the east Venus blazes in all its glory. Ten or 15 degrees below the morning star is the second-brightest heavenly object, Jupiter; midway between the two is much fainter Mars, no brighter than any old star.
The darkness between sunset Tuesday and sunrise Wednesday marks the peak of this year’s Leonids meteor shower. The byproduct of comet Tempel-Tuttle, the Leonids top out at around 15 meteors an hour. Traced back, they appear to emanate from the constellation Leo.