Finding Your Way Around the Night Sky
You don’t need a telescope to enjoy the sky over Lethbridge. With a few star patterns and a clear night, you can find the North Star, follow the seasons by the constellations, and tell a planet from a star. This page shows you how, with a star-hop scavenger hunt for the kids and links to our meteor shower calendar, eclipses and aurora pages.
On this page
Start with your own eyes
Once someone shows you the Big Dipper, the sky stops being “a lot of stars”. It has landmarks, and you can hop from one to the next.
Southern Alberta is a good place to learn. The air is dry, the horizons are wide, and a short drive gets you away from the city glow. Lethbridge sits at about 49.7° north, which means some star patterns never set here. They just circle the North Star all night, all year. Others come and go with the seasons, so the sky in January looks quite different from the sky in July.
Everything on this page works with your eyes alone. Binoculars are a bonus, and a telescope can wait. Start with the Big Dipper: from Lethbridge it’s above the horizon every clear night of the year.
The Sky and Stars section
This section works alongside two pages already on the site. Here’s where to find what:
Sky calendar
The big annual meteor showers, traditional full moon names, spotting the Space Station, which planets are up, and a family meteor count night.
Eclipses
Safe solar eclipse viewing, a pinhole projector, what a lunar eclipse looks like, and the next eclipses from southern Alberta, including the total eclipse of 2044.
Aurora night out
Planning a family trip to see the northern lights: reading the forecast, picking a public dark spot, phone photos, and staying warm and safe.
Dark Skies and Stargazing
Where to go: the observatory in our river valley, dark spots close to home, the Cypress Hills Dark-Sky Preserve, Waterton and more.
Northern Lights over Lethbridge
Our full aurora guide, with a live aurora check, the science, what the Kp index means for Lethbridge, and the forecast tools.
The Big Dipper and the North Star
The Big Dipper is seven bright stars shaped like a ladle: four make the bowl and three the bent handle. It’s part of a larger constellation, Ursa Major, the Great Bear. From Lethbridge it never sets, but it swings around the sky through the night and the year. On spring evenings it’s high overhead; on autumn evenings it sits low in the north, bowl up, sometimes skimming the horizon.
Finding Polaris, the North Star
- Find the bowl. Look for the four stars of the Dipper’s bowl, then the two stars on the end of the bowl farthest from the handle. These are called the pointer stars.
- Draw a line. Imagine a line from the pointer star at the bottom of the bowl through the one at the rim, and keep going out past the rim.
- Go about five times as far. Measure the gap between the two pointers, then go about five of those gaps along your line. NASA’s stargazing notes describe it this way.
- Find a medium-bright star on its own. That’s Polaris. It sits at the end of the handle of the Little Dipper, which is much fainter.
Polaris isn’t the brightest star in the sky; it’s only medium-bright. What makes it special is where it is: almost exactly above Earth’s North Pole, so while every other star circles through the night, Polaris barely moves. Face it, and you’re facing north.
From Lethbridge, Polaris sits about halfway up the northern sky. That’s no accident: the height of the North Star above the horizon is roughly equal to your latitude, so here it’s about 50° up. Travel north and it climbs higher; travel south and it sinks toward the horizon.
The pointers work in any season, whichever way up the Dipper is.
Cassiopeia, the W
Cassiopeia is five fairly bright stars in a zigzag shape, like a W or an M depending on which way up it is. It sits on the opposite side of Polaris from the Big Dipper, so the two take turns: when the Dipper is low in the north, Cassiopeia is high, and the other way around.
That makes Cassiopeia the Dipper’s partner on autumn and early winter evenings, when the Dipper hugs the northern horizon. Look high in the northeast to north for the W. It never sets from Lethbridge either.
Cassiopeia can also lead you to Polaris. NASA’s star-finding notes say that if you take the first V of the W, split the angle down the middle and extend that line, it leads to the area near the North Star.
What it means for you: on a dark autumn night, scan Cassiopeia with binoculars. It sits in the band of the Milky Way, and the field is packed with faint stars and little star clusters.
Orion, the winter hunter
If you only learn one winter constellation, make it Orion. NASA calls it one of the most easily recognized constellations in the sky. Look for three bright stars in a short, straight row: Orion’s belt. Around the belt, four bright stars make the hunter’s shoulders and knees.
- Betelgeuse marks one shoulder. It’s a red giant, and it really does look orange-yellow beside the other stars.
- Rigel marks the opposite foot. It’s a blue-white supergiant, about as bright as Betelgeuse.
- Orion’s sword hangs below the belt as a short line of fainter stars. The fuzzy middle “star” isn’t a star at all. It’s the Orion Nebula, a cloud of gas where new stars are forming, and you can see it with your eyes alone from a dark spot. In binoculars it’s a lovely glowing smudge.
Hopping from the belt
Follow the line of the belt down and to the left (toward the southeast) and you reach Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky. Follow it the other way, up and to the right, and you reach the orange star Aldebaran in Taurus, then keep going a bit farther to the Pleiades, a tiny, misty dipper-shaped cluster of stars that looks wonderful in binoculars.
When to look: Orion is an evening sight from about December to March, high in the south by mid-winter. In November it rises mid-evening.
Orion season is also our coldest season, and the clearest nights are often the coldest of all, because there’s no cloud to hold in the day’s warmth. Check the overnight low and the wind on our forecast page before you head out, and remember that wind chill matters more than the thermometer when you’re standing still.
The Summer Triangle
On summer evenings, look for three bright stars making a big triangle high in the east after dark, then nearly overhead by late evening. The American Museum of Natural History describes it as a triangle that covers half the night sky. Each star belongs to a different constellation:
| Star | Constellation | How to tell it |
|---|---|---|
| Vega | Lyra, the lyre (harp) | The brightest of the three, blue-white, and the highest in early summer. |
| Deneb | Cygnus, the swan | The tail of the swan. Cygnus is also called the Northern Cross. |
| Altair | Aquila, the eagle | The southern point of the triangle, with a fainter star on each side. |
On a dark, moonless night away from town, the Milky Way, the glow of countless distant stars in our own galaxy, runs right through the triangle.
When to look: evenings from about June to October, best in July and August.
Summer nights are short here. Around the June solstice, the sky at our latitude never gets fully dark, even at midnight. The bright stars are easy, but the Milky Way is best from late July onward. See Dark Skies and Stargazing for why.
Planet or star?
Some of the brightest “stars” you see are actually planets. Here’s how to tell.
- Planets usually don’t twinkle. Stars are so far away that each one is a tiny point of light, and moving pockets of air make it flicker. A planet is close enough to show a tiny disk, so NASA explains that the flickering averages out and the planet shines steadily. Near the horizon, even planets can shimmer a bit, so judge when they’re well up.
- Planets stay near a line. The sun, the moon and the planets all travel along the same band of sky, called the ecliptic. If a bright light lines up with the moon’s path, or with where the sun set, there’s a good chance it’s a planet.
- Planets move. Over a few weeks a planet slowly shifts against the background stars. The word planet comes from the Greek for wanderer.
- Some have colours and habits. Venus is the brilliant “evening star” or “morning star”, seen only in the west after sunset or the east before sunrise. Jupiter is bright and steady. Mars has an orange-red tint. Saturn is a steady, pale yellow.
Which planets are up changes from month to month, so we don’t list dates here. Our Sky calendar explains where to check each month.
What it means for you: if you have binoculars, steady them against a fence post or your car roof and look at Jupiter. You can often see up to four tiny star-like dots lined up beside it. They’re Jupiter’s largest moons, and they change position from night to night.
Practical tips for a good night out
Let your eyes adjust
NASA’s Night Sky Network says our eyes take about 30 minutes to fully adapt to the dark. One look at a bright screen or headlights undoes much of that, so give yourself time and protect it.
Use red light
White light makes your pupils shrink. A dim red flashlight or headlamp, or red cellophane over a light, lets you see the ground and a star chart without ruining your night vision. Turn your phone’s brightness right down too.
Binoculars first
Ordinary binoculars show far more than most people expect: craters on the moon, the Pleiades, the Orion Nebula and Jupiter’s moons. Rest your elbows on something solid, or lean back in a chair, to keep the view steady.
Dress warmer than you think
You’ll be standing or sitting still for a long time, and clear nights are cold nights. Wear layers, a warm hat, mitts and insulated boots. Our What to Wear guide has the details, including wind chill and dressing kids.
Mind the moon
A bright moon washes out faint stars and the Milky Way. For the best views, go out in the week or so around the new moon. The moon itself is a great binocular target when it’s a crescent or half-lit.
Get comfortable
A reclining lawn chair or a sleeping pad and blanket on the ground saves your neck. Bring a hot drink. Comfortable stargazers stay out longer and see more.
A forecast that says “clear” is a start, but cloud, haze, wildfire smoke and wind all matter. Check the cloud and overnight low on our forecast page, then see Reading the sky forecast like an astronomer for Environment and Climate Change Canada’s free astronomy forecast of cloud, transparency and seeing.
Heading out of town after dark? Pull fully off the road before you stop, stay on public land, watch for deer, and tell someone where you’re going. See Safety on dark rural roads.
Star-hop scavenger hunt
Star-hopping is how astronomers find their way: start at something easy, then hop to the next thing. This hunt works from a back yard on a clear night.
Why does the sky turn? The stars aren’t really moving around us. We are the ones turning. Earth spins once a day, like a merry-go-round, so the stars seem to slide across the sky. Polaris sits right above the middle of the merry-go-round, so it hardly moves at all.
Wonder: if you looked at the Big Dipper at bedtime and again in the morning before school, would it be in the same place? Which way would it have moved?
Try this: the star-hop scavenger hunt. Tick off each one you find. Ask a grown-up to check your finds.
- ☐ The Big Dipper (all seven stars)
- ☐ The two pointer stars at the end of the bowl
- ☐ Polaris, the North Star, by following the pointers
- ☐ Cassiopeia, the W, on the other side of Polaris
- ☐ A star with a colour: orange, yellow or blue-white
- ☐ Something that doesn’t twinkle (it might be a planet)
- ☐ Winter only: Orion’s belt, then hop down to Sirius, the brightest star
- ☐ Summer only: the three stars of the Summer Triangle
- ☐ A satellite: a slow, steady dot of light moving across the sky with no blinking
- ☐ Bonus: draw the Big Dipper at bedtime, then again an hour later. What changed?
Learning with others
Looking through a real telescope with someone who knows the sky is the fastest way to learn. Two places to start:
- Lethbridge Astronomy Society runs the Oldman River Observatory in Popson Park, right here in the river valley, with public observing nights in the fall-to-spring season. Details are on our Dark Skies and Stargazing page.
- The Royal Astronomical Society of Canada (RASC), Calgary Centre is the nearest RASC centre. It runs public events, youth programs, monthly speakers and an online night sky planner and monthly sky charts. The RASC Calgary Centre website has its current calendar.
RASC also publishes the Observer’s Handbook each year, the standard Canadian reference for the year’s sky events.
Handy tools for this
- Lethbridge Daylight: Sunrise, sunset and how much daylight Lethbridge gets, today and through the year.
- All games and tools: Every tool on our sites in one place.
Sources
- NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, “Finding the Pole Star” (pointer stars, about five times the gap, Cassiopeia on the opposite side of the pole): pwg.gsfc.nasa.gov
- Caltech IPAC (NASA infrared science centre), Cool Cosmos, How can I find the North Star? (pointer stars; Polaris is not very bright): coolcosmos.ipac.caltech.edu
- NASA Science, Astronomy Picture of the Day, “The Hunter’s Stars” (Orion, Betelgeuse, Rigel, the belt and the Orion Nebula): science.nasa.gov
- American Museum of Natural History, Your Guide to the Summer Night Sky (Summer Triangle, Vega, Deneb, Altair): amnh.org
- NASA Imagine the Universe, Ask an Astrophysicist, why stars twinkle and planets don’t (archived NASA page): webarchive.library.unt.edu
- NASA Night Sky Network, Night Sky Notes, “Stargazing for Beginners” (about 30 minutes to dark-adapt; red light): nightsky.jpl.nasa.gov
- RASC Ottawa Centre, How to Party with the Stars (red light, dress warmly, bring binoculars): ottawa.rasc.ca
- RASC Calgary Centre, About Us (public events, youth programs, sky charts): calgary.rasc.ca
- Which star patterns never set from Lethbridge, and Polaris’s height, are worked out from our latitude (about 49.7° N): any star more than about 40° north of the celestial equator never sets here, and the North Star’s height above the horizon is about equal to the latitude.