Cold Mountain Sky

This lovely celestial view is surely a familiar one to winter skygazers in the northern hemisphere. Lights silhouetting the trees are from nearby towns Morganton and Rutherford College, North Carolina , USA. But the scene may also look familiar to attentive fans of the movie Cold Mountain, whose fictional characters discuss this same factual starry sky . Sporting belt and sword, Orion the hunter is an easily identifiable constellation above center. Above and to his right lies a V-shaped arrangement of stars in the Hyades star cluster anchored by bright Aldebaran . Below and at the left of the hunter are his dogs Canis Major and Canis Minor , and their respective alpha stars Sirius and Procyon . Need a program to follow the stars? Just put your cursor over the Cold Mountain Sky.