In case you haven’t heard, which I’m sure many of you have, there’s a promising comet on the way. By promising, I mean it may be bright and bright enough to see with the naked eye, especially in the dark skies of the countryside. It may even be easily visible to stargazers from urban and suburban light-polluted locations. It may have a relatively sizable tail of dust and gas.

Presently, the comet is roughly in a line between the Earth and the sun, lost in the glare of our home star. But starting next weekend, look for it in the very low western sky during the later part of evening twilight. It might be really tough to spot then, but as October continues, Tsuchinshan-Atlas will start evenings a little higher in the west. I’ll have much more next week on the partially melting cosmic dirty snow and ice ball paying us a visit.

Meanwhile, I have a pleasant celestial challenge for you, the long and winding Draco the Dragon. It’s not the easiest of constellations to find, but once you do, you feel like you’ve accomplished something. It always reminds me of one of the great Beatles classics, “The Long and Winding Road,” because that is what it truly is in the northwestern October sky. It’s undoubtedly one of the larger constellations in the heavens, but the difficulty locating it is that most of Draco’s stars aren’t all that bright.

The best way to find Draco is to visualize it more as a coiled snake than a dragon as if we know what dragons look like anyway! According to Greek mythology, Draco is supposed to be a stretched-out dragon, so the snake appearance works … but we’ll visit that later.

(Mike Lynch)

To begin your quest of Draco, gaze high in the west-southwest heavens for the brightest star you can see. That will be Vega, high in the western sky and the brightest star in the small constellation Lyra the Harp. Look a little to the upper right of Vega for a modestly bright trapezoid of four stars that outline the head of the dragon. This is where you find Draco’s brightest star, which honestly isn’t all that bright.

Your Draco challenge is well underway. Hold your fist out at arm’s length. At about two of your “fist-widths” above and a little to the right of Draco’s head, you’ll find two faint stars reasonably close to each other.  These less-than-brilliant stars mark the end of the snake dragon’s neck. I believe locating those two stars is the key to seeing the rest of Draco. Draco’s body makes a U-turn from those two stars, coiling down and a little to the right about two and a half fist-widths. From there, you’ll see a reasonably faint but distinct horizontal line of stars that kink off to the right to depict the faint tail of Draco. You’ll observe that Draco’s tail lies above the much brighter Big Dipper and below the dimmer Little Dipper. I hope between my description and the star map, you can find Draco. It looks like a backward letter “S.”

How poor Draco wound up unwound in the sky is quite the mythological tale. One of the versions goes like this. Hera, the queen of the gods, was given a gorgeous basket of solid gold apples as a wedding present from her new but not-so-faithful husband, Zeus, the king of the gods. She kept her precious apples in her private garden at the castle and had her pet dragon, Draco, guard the apples. Draco has been Hera’s pet since childhood and is highly loyal to her. He guarded those apples 24/7 and fended off many dastardly thieves. No one got by Draco until one fateful night.

On that moonless night, while Draco was taking a catnap at his post, Hercules, the legendary hero, blitzed and smashed the palace gate and leaped toward the golden fruit. It was a lightning raid! Draco rousted himself immediately, and a tumultuous battle went on for hours and hours. Draco just about had Hercules trapped in his coiled tail and was about to squeeze the life out of him when, with all his might, Hercules managed to pull his emergency switchblade dagger out of his shoe and pierced it right through the beast’s heart. Hercules then made off with his plundering of golden apples.

Hera discovered Draco’s body minus a whole bunch of blood and the absent apples. She was greatly upset about losing the golden apples but was more upset about losing a pet she’d known all her life. Hera decided to reward Draco for his loyalty by magically placing his body in the stars as an eternal honor to him. The trouble is that when she picked up his bloody, mangled body and hurled it into the heavens, it quickly and unceremoniously unraveled.

Draco is not one of the easiest constellations to find, but looking for it and finding it will sharpen your stargazing skills. Wind down from your busy day and look for Hera’s loyal and now unwound celestial dragon.

Mike Lynch is an amateur astronomer and retired broadcast meteorologist for WCCO Radio in Minneapolis/St. Paul. He is the author of “Stars: a Month by Month Tour of the Constellations,” published by Adventure Publications and available at bookstores and adventurepublications.net. Mike is available for private star parties. You can contact him at mikewlynch@comcast.net.

Starwatch programs

Monday, Oct. 7, 7-8:30 p.m., near Marshall, Minn. For more information and location, call Marshall Public Library at 507-537-7003 or visit www.marshalllyonlibrary.org.

Tuesday, Oct. 10 (Weather backup date Oct. 12) in Chippewa Falls, Wis. For location, more information, and reservations, call 586-723-2050 or visit www.chippewavalleyschools.org/departments/community-ed.

Wednesday, Oct. 9, 7-9 p.m. at Isanti Middle School. For reservations call 763-689-6188 or visit www.c-ischools.org/school/community-ed.

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