“The Sky This Week” appears every Tuesday. It is written by Ian Clarke, Director of the Hatter Planetarium at Gettysburg College. The planetarium offers regular educational presentations about the stars and the skies; there’s something for early elementary through adults. Field trip requests are welcome. NOTE: field trip request form for 2022-23 is now live. Shows have concluded for Fall 2022, but we will post the schedule for spring 2023 in the next few days. Images created with Stellarium.
Continuing our tour of notable features of the winter skies, this week I’d like to move on to a new star—Procyon. We are now three stars into a clockwise circuit of the loop of stars, sometimes known as the “Winter Hexagon.” The first two were Rigel in Orion and Sirius in Canis Major. Procyon is the brightest star in the little constellation of Canis Minor, in classical skylore the smaller or Orion’s two hunting dogs. Procyon is the 8th brightest star in the sky. Like Sirius, it is bright mostly because it is close to us, lying only 11.6 light-years from earth. Procyon is a binary (double) star system, with the two stars orbiting each other about every 40 years.
The planet Venus is beginning a tour as an “evening star.” Look for it low in the southwest after sunset. It is close to the much fainter planet Saturn and will be getting closer over the next couple of weeks.
Ian Clarke is the director of the Hatter Planetarium at Gettysburg College. In addition he has taught introductory astronomy labs and first-year writing there for over 30 years (not necessarily all at the same time). He was educated at Biglerville High School, the University of Virginia, and the University of Iowa. He lives in Gettysburg.