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You'll also want a good deep-sky guidebook, such as Sue French's Deep-Sky Wonders collection (which includes its own charts), Sky Atlas 2000.0 Companion by Strong and Sinnott, or the bigger Night Sky Observer's Guide by Kepple and Sanner.

LIGHTZONE SHRINKS MY PICS HOW TO

And read how to use sky charts with a telescope. The next up, once you know your way around, is the even larger Uranometria 2000.0 (stars to magnitude 9.75). Next up is the larger and deeper Sky Atlas 2000.0, plotting stars to magnitude 8.5 nearly three times as many. The basic standard is the Pocket Sky Atlas (in either the original or new Jumbo Edition), which shows stars to magnitude 7.6. Once you get a telescope, to put it to good use you'll need a detailed, large-scale sky atlas (set of charts). Shown above is the new Jumbo Edition for easier reading in the night. Also plotted are many hundreds of telescopic galaxies, star clusters, and nebulae. The Pocket Sky Atlas plots 30,796 stars to magnitude 7.6 - which may sound like a lot, but it's less than one per square degree on the sky. For an easy-to-use constellation guide covering the whole evening sky, use the big monthly map in the center of each issue of Sky & Telescope, the essential guide to astronomy. Want to become a better astronomer? Learn your way around the constellations! They're the key to locating everything fainter and deeper to hunt with binoculars or a telescope. Watch the distance between them increase through the night as the Moon moves east along its orbit.

The waning gibbous Moon shines near Regulus, after they rise around 8 p.m.

If you're too far south, it's already gone.

The farther north you are the higher it will be. Look for it twinkling over the northwest horizon during and shortly after nightfall.

Here it is the coldest month of the year, but the 'Summer Star,' Vega, is still barely hanging in there.

So all this month, Jupiter's western limb looks distinctly more shadowed in a telescope than its slightly more Sun-facing eastern limb.

Jupiter is at western quadrature, 90° west of the Sun.

Neptune, at magnitude 7.9, is about 100,000 times fainter! Use high power to try to discern the nonstellar nature of its tiny disk, only 2.2 arcseconds wide. For North American observers they'll appear closest this evening, about 0.4° apart, with Neptune to Venus's lower left. The Moon is in Gemini, with Castor and Pollux to its left and Procyon below or lower left of it.

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Full Moon tonight (exactly full at 6:34 a.m.

Algol shines at minimum light, magnitude 3.4 instead of its usual 2.1, for a couple hours centered on 9:19 p.m.

The Moon, nearly full, shines in the dim Club of Orion - with Betelgeuse to its lower right in early evening, Gemini's Alhena closer to the Moon's lower left, and Elnath in Taurus above it.

The Moon occults Aldebaran for Arabia, India, China, and Japan map and timetables.

Now the Moon shines to Aldebaran's lower left during evening for North America.

Late tonight the dark limb of the Moon occults 4th-magnitude Gamma Tauri for most of western and central North America map and timetables.

The waxing gibbous Moon shines below the Pleiades and right of Aldebaran this evening.

See the observing project in the January Sky & Telescope, page 48.

The deep, flat-bottomed eclipsing binary star RW Tauri drops from 8th to 12th magnitude and back this evening (centered on 9:30 p.m.

Its handle is very low and its bowl is to the upper right.

The Big Dipper, meanwhile, is creeping up in the north-northeast.

In this coldest time of the year, the dim Little Dipper hangs straight down from Polaris after dinnertime - as if, per Leslie Peltier, from a nail on the cold north wall of the sky.

Upper right of Aldebaran, spot the Pleiades through the moonlight.

Aldebaran shines well to the left or lower left of the waxing gibbous Moon this evening.

When it's in this position, Cassiopeia is a flattened letter M. This is the time of the year when Cassiopeia passes highest, just north of overhead, right after dark.Look above the Moon this evening for the two or three brightest stars of Aries.The Venus-Mars-Fomalhaut triangle continues to narrow.

Keep an eye on it! This view is for just after dark. The Venus-Mars-Fomalhaut triangle has changed a lot in the last month.

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