The mighty lion makes itself visible as it climbs the sky on these April nights. The outline of the familiar beast is quite recognizable as related to the Big Dipper. The Dipper stars form a pot with a handle and if you were to drill a hole in the celestial pot, water would pour onto the back of Leo. The Lion’s front half is portrayed by a sickle or backwards question mark starting from the bright star Regulus. This star is about five times the size of our sun and about 160 times brighter.

Last month we ended our tour of the Winter Milky Way in Auriga with a trio of open clusters namely M38, M36 and M37. Travelling down from this point, we now cross the border and find ourselves in Gemini. The two prominent stars depicting the twins are Castor and Pollux with distances of 52 and 34 light-years respectively. Using simple binoculars, move to the feet of Castor until a magnitude 5.5 open cluster jumps in your field of view.