Photo by Joshua Gordon You can spot the seven stars of the
Winter Hexagon high in the eastern sky on any clear night after
9 .pm. Neither bright moonlight nor city lights can hide these
bright stars. Tuesday, December 21, 2010 Jimmy Westlake's
Celestial News column appears Tuesdays in the Steamboat Today.
Find more columns by Westlake here. Steamboat Springs It’s
popularly known as the Winter Circle, but the Winter Hexagon
would be a more descriptive name. The Winter Circle spotlights
eight of the 20 brightest stars in earthly skies — and five of
these are in the top 10: Sirius, Capella, Rigel, Procyon and
Betelgeuse. The Milky Way slices right through the heart of the
hexagon, and it’s flanked by two of the sky’s most beautiful
naked-eye star clusters — the Pleiades cluster leads the way as
the Winter Hexagon marches across the heavens, and the Praesepe
cluster brings up the rear. This magnificent asterism makes a
superb starting point for folks trying to learn their way around
the starry sky. You can locate