Although we're officially past the holiday, it's still the most wonderful time of the year for stargazing, even in the cold of January.

Even if you live where light pollution is a problem, you can't help but be impressed with the great celestial show, especially in the southern half of the sky. Without a doubt, the brightest stars and constellations of the year are available right now in the early evening.

Also, the blurring humidity of summer is gone and the skies are dry and extra transparent.

This winter we also have a bonus as the bright planets Mars and Jupiter lighting up the Butler night sky.

If you're not already there, it's well worth taking a trip to the darker skies of the countryside, expecting to be absolutely dazzled. Maybe find a park or contact somebody you know who lives out there.

The next couple of weeks are perfect for making the trip because the moon is out of the evening sky, leaving the skies even darker.

Don’t just jump out of the car and take a hasty glance. Have heavy coats and boots and bundle up so you can spend as much time as possible under the stunning sky. Bring a lawn chair, sit back with a big quilt over you, and have something warm to sip. I guarantee it'll be a glorious experience, a magical, mystical evening you won't forget.

The centerpiece of the stellar winter jewels is the constellation Orion the Hunter. It is one of the biggest and one of the few constellations that actually resembles what it's supposed to be.

Without too much heavy lifting with your imagination, you can see how the stars outline the torso of a well-built man with broad shoulders and a tight waistline marked by three distinct stars lined up in a row that make up the mighty hunter's belt.

Orion is full of wonderful celestial treasures like the Great Orion Nebula.

Three fainter stars lined up in a row lie below Orion's Belt. That allegedly is Orion's sword. The middle star in the sword seems a little fuzzy, and that's because it isn't a star but instead of a huge cloud of hydrogen gas where thousands of stars are being born gravitationally.

This week in Starwatch, I also want to touch on my favorite mythology story about Orion that comes from the ancient Greeks and Romans.

According to one of many versions of the tale, Orion was the son of Poseidon, the god of the sea.

His mother was a mortal that Poseidon was having a fling with. That made Orion a half-god, and since his old man was the sea deity, Orion was literally able to walk on water. That made fishing very easy. He simply walked about on the ocean's surface and pulled whatever he fancied out of the waves.

Orion was also a great hunter. He had a great life as a bachelor hunter. Then he met Artemis, the Greek goddess of the moon and the hunt. That was his downfall.

This relationship angered Helios, the god of the sun and the brother of Artemis. He didn't like the idea of his kid sister messing with a roughneck like Orion.

Helios then launched a plot to kill Orion using a giant Scorpion that chased Orion out to sea after a terrific battle. Helios saw all this and summoned his sister to the scene.

By the time Artemis arrived at the shore, Orion was just a speck way out of the ocean's surface. Helios asked her sister if she was a good enough archer to hit that "speck" with an arrow. She accepted the challenge, pulled way back on her bow and nailed Orion on the first shot. Helios gave his sister a high-five, and they both left the scene.

Eventually Orion's body washed up on shore, and Artemis realized what had happened. She begged Zeus, her father, to transform his body into the constellation we see.

Artemis would be able to see her boyfriend in the stars as she guided the moon across the sky. She also asked her father to find that giant Scorpion and kill it.

Since Zeus was in on the plot, though, he wanted to reward the mammoth Scorpion and transform him into the constellation Scorpius. Not to torture his daughter, though, he flung the Scorpion to the opposite end of the sky from Orion. That's why the constellation Scorpius is seen in the summer and early autumn and never appears in the sky at the same time Orion does.

Comet ZTF

No guarantees, but a comet traveling nearly 50,000 years from the outer reaches of our solar system may be visible to the naked eye in late January and early February.

It's Comet ZTF, named after the Zwicky Transit Facility, based in California. It'll be at its closest approach to Earth, about 26 million miles away on Feb. 2. That's when it'll be at its brightest.

About a week on either side of that date, ZTF may be visible with a small telescope or a good pair of binoculars, maybe even with the naked eye, especially in the dark skies of the countryside. It'll track between the Big Dipper and Little Dipper near Polaris, the North Star.

I'll have more next week in Starwatch.

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. Contact him at mikewlynch@comcast.net.