Bundle up and look up: 5 winter sky wonders every stargazer should look out for

In the northern United States, enjoying the starry winter sky requires protection against the prevailing low temperatures. Fortunately, that's easy to manage — as any ski enthusiast will tell you. Indeed, many assiduous skywatchers observe outdoors with little discomfort.

You don't need to bundle up like Ralphie in the holiday movie A Christmas Story. One of the best garments is a hooded ski parka, which is lightweight yet provides excellent insulation. Ski pants are far superior to ordinary trousers, and most important of all is to remember your feet. Two pairs of warm socks inside loose-fitting shoes are often adequate, but for extended observing sessions in truly penguin-like conditions, insulated boots are a must.

Under a clear, crisp and cold winter sky, there are many celestial sights that can be enjoyed with the unaided eye, binoculars, or a small telescope. We'll assume that you're gazing skyward as soon as evening twilight has ended and complete darkness has fallen — roughly 90 minutes or so after sunset. What follows is my personal Top Five list of deep-sky objects visible during the early evening hours of January and February.

Putting together a list of the best is, of course, very subjective. From your own nights of skywatching, you may try compiling your own list and see if you agree with me.

5. Messier 35: A superb star cluster!

About halfway up in the eastern sky are the Gemini Twins, Pollux and Castor. They appear in the sky as two matchstick men holding hands. During this winter of 2026, brilliant Jupiter happens to be residing right in the middle of this constellation, like a brilliant silvery "star." Henry Neeley (1879-1963), who was a popular lecturer at New York's Hayden Planetarium during the 1940s and '50s, would often refer to the "long wedge" of Gemini, composed of the stars Pollux and Castor (the heads of the Twins) and Alhena, which marks one of Pollux's feet.

With binoculars, it's well worth sweeping the region westward from Alhena toward the fainter stars of Tejat and Propus. Just above and to the right of Propus lies Messier 35, located near Castor's trailing foot.

On dark, clear nights, M35 is faintly visible to the unaided eye. Through low-power binoculars, it may first appear as a dim, unresolved interstellar cloud, but look again. Even through light-polluted suburban skies, 7x binoculars reveal at least a half dozen of the cluster's brightest stars against the whitish glow of about 200 fainter ones. M35 has been described as a "splendid specimen" whose stars appear in curving rows, reminding one of the bursting of a skyrocket.

The late Walter Scott Houston (1912-1993), who wrote the Deep-Sky Wonders column in Sky & Telescope magazine for nearly half a century, called M35: ". . . one of the greatest objects in the heavens. A superb object that appears as big as the Moon and fills the eyepiece with a glitter of bright stars from center to edge."

4. The Double Cluster of Perseus

If you look halfway up in the northwest, you'll be able to see the familiar zigzag of five bright stars forming the constellation of Cassiopeia, the Queen. Extend an imaginary line about one and a half times the distance from Gamma Cassiopeiae through Delta Cassiopeiae (Ruchbah), and you'll encounter a faint blur of light.

Binoculars quickly reveal this glow as two magnificent open clusters — NGC 869 and NGC 884 — collectively known as the Double Cluster. Traditionally associated with the sword handle of Perseus, it is among the most spectacular sights in the winter sky.

Each cluster spans about 45 arc minutes, or about one-third larger than the apparent diameter of the moon. So, you should use very low powers to get both clusters together in the same field of view. Much higher powers will cause the star field to be spread out and not as impressive. Close inspection with a good telescope will reveal a fine ruby-colored star near the center of 884.

3 & 2: The face of the angry bull (The Hyades) and The Seven Sisters (The Pleiades)

High in the southern sky shines Taurus the Bull, home to two of the sky's most famous star clusters: the Hyades and the Pleiades.

These star patterns belong to the deep-sky category of open, or galactic clusters (of which Messier 35 and the Double Cluster are as well), concentrated along the plane of the Milky Way. In winter, we are looking directly into our galaxy's local spiral arm — called the Orion Arm — where both bright stars and rich clusters abound.

The Hyades lie about 150 light-years away, making them the nearest major open cluster to Earth. Their stars form a distinctive V-shape that outlines the bull's face. The bright orange star Aldebaran appears to complete this pattern, but it is actually a foreground object only about 65 light-years away — a chance alignment that fooled ancient skywatchers and helped cement Taurus's identity in classical mythology.

The Pleiades, by contrast, sit about 440 light-years from Earth and resemble a tiny dipper. Beginners often mistake them for the Little Dipper. At first glance, they look like a shimmering patch of light, but careful viewing reveals six or seven bright stars, with keen-eyed observers spotting many more under excellent conditions.

For the very best view, use 7x binoculars or a small telescope at 15-20x with a wide field of view. The stars glitter like an array of icy blue diamonds on black velvet. Or, as Tennyson wrote, in the opening passage of Locksley Hall, they ". . . glitter like a swarm of fireflies tangled in a silver braid."

The Pleiades isn't composed of just seven stars; recent research reveals it's a vast "Greater Pleiades Complex" with over 3,000 stars, though the familiar, bright core contains about 1000 members.

1. The Orion Nebula

Orion, the Mighty Hunter, is now high toward the south-southeast by nightfall. Below Orion's famous three-star belt is undoubtedly one of the most wonderfully beautiful objects in the sky: Messier 42, the Orion Nebula. It appears to surround the middle star of a fainter trio of stars in a line that marks the hunter's sword. It's invisible to the unaided eye, though the star itself appears a bit fuzzy. It is resolved in good binoculars and small telescopes as a bright gray-green mist enveloping the star. In larger telescopes, it appears to be a great, glowing, irregular, translucent fan-shaped cloud. A sort of auroral glow is induced in this nebula by fluorescence from the strong ultraviolet radiation of four hot stars entangled within it: Theta-one Orionis, better known as the Trapezium.

Edward Emerson Barnard (1857-1923), for many years an astronomer at Yerkes Observatory, once remarked that it reminded him of a great ghostly bat and that he always experienced a feeling of surprise when he saw it. William T. Olcott (1873-1936) called it "A glorious and wonderful sight . . . words fail utterly to describe its beauty."

The Orion Nebula is a vast cloud of extremely tenuous glowing gas and dust, approximately 1,500 light-years away and about 30 light-years across (or more than 20,000 times the diameter of the entire solar system). Astrophysicists now believe that this nebulous stuff is a stellar incubator; the primeval chaos from which star formation is presently underway.

Certainly, all you need to do is take one look through the eyepiece of a good telescope and you will see for yourself why this interstellar nursery is my choice as the number one sky object to look for on a clear, dark winter's night.

If you're looking for a telescope to view deep space objects, our best telescopes for deep space guide may help. We also have a guide to astrophotography for beginners, which covers everything from equipment to shooting modes and more. Our best cameras for astrophotography and best lenses for astrophotography can also help you prepare to capture your next skywatching sight.

Joe Rao serves as an instructor and guest lecturer at New York's Hayden Planetarium. He writes about astronomy for Natural History magazine, Sky and Telescope and other publications.