Nick Strobel has been a professor at BC for 27 years and writes the semimonthly astronomy column for The Californian.

As the temperatures drop and nights lengthen, we're now able to see the beautiful Pleiades star cluster rising in the east in the early evening.

It lies at the shoulder of the constellation Taurus and, as such, it precedes the other bright constellations of winter: Auriga with bright Capella at one corner, Orion with the three belt stars and red Betelgeuse and blue-white Rigel at opposite corners, Gemini with Pollux and Castor, Canis Minor with bright Procyon at one end, and Canis Major with the brightest night star of all, Sirius.