December night sky

[eve_prime]

It’s interesting, actually, to pay attention to the relative brightness of the stars, in the course of the evening. As soon as it’s fully dark, Orion is rising in the south-east, and its reddish Betelgeuse and blue-white Rigel are the brightest stars in the sky. Once Orion is well above the horizon, there’s Procyon in the east, a similarly bright star, more or less, but an hour or so later, beneath Orion’s belt (which is then somewhat perpendicular to the horizon), Sirius appears, remarkably brighter than anything else in the sky (ignoring the moon, of course). All summer long we don’t see Sirius (at least at any time of night that I’m out and about), and in the fall it’s kind of amazing, Sirius, brighter than the brightest stars of summer. So we can appreciate Sirius as it rises in the southeastern night sky, gaudy and eye-catching. But then, an hour or two later, along comes Jupiter, so much brighter than Sirius that at this point that Betelgeuse and Rigel seem pretty mundane. And Jupiter is so much nearer than all of those stars that it seems almost friendly, and “ours.”