Next Wednesday's full moon, the Snow Moon, will be in the zodiacal constellation Leo. Leo is a constellation we associate more with spring than winter. The brightest star in the constellation is Regulus, one of a few bright stars in that area of the sky.

Winter offers us a lot of bright stars, and they are so much brighter than the stars we see in spring. Consider Orion, the hunter, a winter constellation easy to see now, so much easier to identify by its many bright stars. Overhead, the constellation Gemini along with Taurus, the bull, are all fairly easy to identify. Astronomers tell us this area of the sky is our local neighborhood in the Milky Way. The stars are not only bright and big, they are relatively close to us compared to other stars in other areas of the sky.

When you look towards Leo you are looking towards an area of our sky not so close. Leo and the zodiacal constellation Virgo, appearing later in the night in the east, are full of galaxies far from the Milky Way. You can visualize in your mind seeing out beyond the Milky Way. While all the stars you see in our night sky reside in our Milky Way, behind the stars in Leo and Virgo there is a window to the galaxies far beyond.

If only those distant islands were brighter. You'll need a telescope to see the galaxies.