The planet Jupiter rises to the lower left of the Moon this evening and follows the Moon during the night. It looks like a brilliant star. Through binoculars, its four largest moons look like tiny stars arrayed near the giant planet.

Jupiter, the largest planet in the solar system, is in great view tonight, a little to the right of the Moon as they rise in early evening. Jupiter looks like a brilliant star, and is outshone by only the Moon.

Gamma Cassiopeia, which forms the center point of the "W" that outlines the constellation Cassiopeia, never sets. As Earth rotates, Gamma Cas appears to rotate around the North Star. But like the North Star itself, it never drops below the horizon.

The faint constellation Sculptor scoots low across the south tonight. One of its treasures is the Cartwheel galaxy, which is 420 million light-years away. It looks like a ring of light, which formed when a small galaxy punched through a larger one.

Deneb, the star that forms the tail of Cygnus, the swan, appears almost directly overhead in early evening. The name Deneb derives from an Arabic word that means "the tail." Deneb is a white supergiant star about 1,500 light-years from Earth.