A crescent moon decorates our early evening skies this weekend. The moon is in the zodiacal constellation Pisces. It will reach First Quarter phase on Sunday night.

Each night in the coming week, the moon will appear to climb higher in the sky. The moon is moving through the zodiac. On New Years Eve, the moon is gibbous and entering into the zodiacal constellation Taurus.

The one constellation that gets more attention at this time of year isn’t the Big Dipper, nor Orion, the Hunter. The constellation Northern Cross, also called Cygnus the Swan, is ideally placed for anyone looking for Christian significance in the heavens.

An hour after sunset, the Northern Cross stands erect in the western sky. First time stargazers will likely require a winter sky chart. The fairly bright star Deneb is at the top of the Cross and it marks the head of the cross.

Well before Christianity got involved in naming constellations, the constellation was recognized as Cygnus, the Swan. They mythology goes back to the Greeks. The head of the swan is closest to the horizon. The star Deneb depicts the swan’s tail.

The star that depicts the head of the swan, the closest to the horizon, is an interesting star, a binary, called Albireo. Though it looks like one star, Albireo is two stars visible through a medium powered telescope. The two stars are stuck together in a gravitational orbit. Through a telescope, one is bright orange, while the other is bluish white.

For those who would love to trace the Milky Way across the sky will find Cygnus densely populated with clouds of stars.