Celestial Guests Join the Winter Hexagon

Dennis Mammana
Mon, 24 Nov 2025 21:00:00 -0800
Lifestyle

Week of November 30 - December 6, 2025

The brilliant moon illuminates our night sky again this week, reaching its full phase on Thursday, Dec. 4. All that extra light in the sky means that stargazers will see only the brightest of celestial objects over its glare. Fortunately, there will be plenty of them, but you'll need to be patient.

Step outdoors around 9:30 or 10 p.m. and you'll see rising in the east the most brilliant stars of the entire year. These are the stars of winter, making their early appearance in our late autumn sky.
Updated: Tue Nov 25, 2025

Week of November 30 - December 6, 2025

The brilliant moon illuminates our night sky again this week, reaching its full phase on Thursday, Dec. 4. All that extra light in the sky means that stargazers will see only the brightest of celestial objects over its glare. Fortunately, there will be plenty of them, but you'll need to be patient.

Step outdoors around 9:30 or 10 p.m. and you'll see rising in the east the most brilliant stars of the entire year. These are the stars of winter, making their early appearance in our late autumn sky.

We can connect these bright stars with imaginary lines to form one of the largest asterisms in all the heavens: the Winter Hexagon (or Winter Oval, if you prefer).

To trace it out, let's start with Sirius, the brightest of all the nighttime stars, twinkling wildly just above the southeastern horizon. Sirius marks the ancient constellation of Canis Major, the great dog, but let's not worry about that for now; Sirius will simply form the starting point of the Winter Hexagon.

From Sirius, follow a line toward the left until you encounter another fairly bright star. This is Procyon, part of Canis Minor, the little dog. Then continue leftward, but begin heading upward also. Here you'll find two nearly equally bright stars known as Pollux and Castor, the main stars in Gemini, the twins. Above these two lies another really bright one: Capella in Auriga, the charioteer.

From Capella, slide downward and to the right until you come upon the reddish-orange star Aldebaran in Taurus. Dropping down even farther, you'll find Rigel in Orion, the hunter. Finally, you'll return to Sirius, where your journey began.

And inside the Hexagon — a bit below its center — lies another bright star that marks the right shoulder of Orion, the hunter. This is the red supergiant star known as Betelgeuse.

All totaled, this easy asterism encompasses half of the 18 brightest stars visible to stargazers from the Earth's Northern Hemisphere!

Now, before you got to Pollux, you encountered a dazzlingly bright "star" and must have wondered why it is not part of the Hexagon. That's because it's not a star, but a planet (Jupiter) and, as regular readers know, planets appear to move among the stars as they orbit the sun. Over the next few months, keep an eye on Jupiter's position relative to Castor and Pollux, and you'll see exactly what I mean. You can even make sketches or photograph the area to compare changes.

The moon also appears to drift among the stars as it orbits eastward around the Earth, and this week you'll see it appearing to pass through the Hexagon. Every month, the moon makes one complete circuit eastward around our planet, and unlike planets, we can see its position change every night.

Watch for the full moon to enter the Winter Hexagon on the night of Dec. 4, when it appears about midway between the stars Aldebaran and Capella. The next night, though, you'll notice that it has moved considerably eastward, and by Dec. 6 you'll see it quite close to Castor, Pollux and Jupiter, before it leaves the Hexagon behind on the 7th.

The Winter Hexagon, also known as the Winter Oval, is one of the largest asterisms in the heavens.