The December night sky is famous for its wash of bright stars, including those forming the Celestial G — namely, Betelgeuse, Rigel, Sirius, Procyon, Pollux, Castor, Capella, and Aldebaran (going clockwise). It also hosts a cache of naked-eye deep-sky objects, many of which are in Orion, as are two of the most famous asterisms in the celestial sphere: Orion’s Belt and Sword. Both are parts of the southern extension of the Orion Molecular Cloud (OMC), which is a vast complex of bright nebulae, obscuring dust clouds, and young star-forming regions all some 1,500 light-years distant and several hundred light-years across.
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