Christmas With The Stars

In December hardy starwatchers can savour some of the finest celestial sights of the year

- Bob Mizon

AT THIS time of year the Plough, in Ursa Major (the Great Bear), performs a balancing act on its three-star handle in the north-east in the late evenings. Catch brilliant Vega, in the little constellation of Lyra, as it sinks to the west with Cygnus the Swan at dusk. Admire with binoculars the glittering swathes of stars in Cepheus and Cassiopeia, the royal couple of the north-western sky. Their daughter Andromeda is close by, offering one of the night sky’s most famous objects, the great spiral star-system known as M31 (the Andromeda Galaxy). This is the largest galaxy in our Local Group of more than 50. Its faint light emanates from some trillion (one million million) stars, and left it 2.3 million years ago when our ancestors w