Every year we send out a star map with our holiday cards and letters. This year’s map is a sneak preview of Saturn, which is dancing through the constellation Gemini throughout 2004. It’s visible now around 9 p.m. about halfway up the eastern sky; by January it will be up all night long, appearing high overhead in the late evenings. It’s worth a shot to observe Saturn over the next few months before it disappears into the glare of the Sun June through mid-August and gets too difficult to observe. Just bundle up warmly if you live in a cold climate, and bring along a small telescope or a powerful pair of binos so you can make out the rings.

Sometimes our friends or family members mention the star chart in letters or conversations. My aunt Cecile told me that they always look forward to getting it so they can do a little stargazing with their daughter. They live in Wyoming in a pretty dark sky site, so I imagine they get a big charge out of the stars. One of my cousins lives in Alaska, and I often think of them going out stargazing for a few minutes and being greeted by auroral displays. Some family members live in the desert southwest or in Florida, which gives them a nice thing to do on a balmy December night, and we even have a few cards going to friends in Europe and one or two in southern hemisphere locales. This far-flung empire of recipients puts a few constraints on what I can illustrate in the charts. Obviously extreme southern or northern sky sights aren’t suitable, so that leaves us the “middle” of the sky (as I like to think of it). The good news is that the constellations of winter (for northern hemisphere types — they’re summer sights for our southern-hemi friends) are really quite pretty, no matter what the temperatures are under which we observe them. So, if you’re looking for a sight to see after your December holiday dinner, here’s this year’s chart. Happy observing!