Sky Watch: See the summer sky in winter

If you're like me, you long for summertime -- and not only for its warm weather and abundant growth, but also for its nighttime sky, which is among the richest of the year. So it's usually around mid-February that I begin wandering outdoors before dawn to sneak a peek at what awaits us in the evening sky just a few months down the road.

There's no great mystery about why the early morning sky appears differently than that of the evening. Our planet rotates on its axis once every day, and as we spin, we face different directions at different times.

Tonight we face those stars associated with the Northern Hemisphere winter, toward constellations such as Orion and Taurus, shining in the southern sky after dark. They're followed closely by those of early spring: Cancer, Leo and the Big Dipper. By dawn, the Earth will have turned us far enough around that those star groupings will be replaced by others -- those that make up the summertime sky.

shape offers a convenient milepost, since the Milky Way passes directly through its center.

Farther to the southeast you'll see the Milky Way flow past Scorpius, the scorpion. Scorpius is one of the few constellations that resembles its namesake, with its claws at the top, its reddish-orange star Antares representing its heart, and its curving tail and stinger that now lie just below the horizon.

The Milky Way is mottled with dark rifts along its length. These are known as giant molecular clouds, or GMCs, globs of interstellar material in silhouette against the Milky Way's brighter stellar band. It is within these GMCs that massive star- and planet-forming regions exist.

If you can't tear yourself from bed to check out this early-morning tapestry, mark your calendar. In a few months, all this will grace our evening sky where all can enjoy it at a less ungodly hour!