BY BERNIE REIM

Correspondent

The sun will reach its lowest point in our sky at 7:04 a.m. on Dec. 21. That is the winter solstice, which means "sun stands still." That also marks our longest night and shortest day for the year. Predictions call for another long, cold and snowy winter in the Northeast.

The whole Winter Hexagon is now visible in our eastern sky by 9 p.m. The stars that make up the famous shape of Orion the Hunter sparkle with exceptional brilliance in the clear, dry, frigid winter air. The classic belt stars, with their Arabic names -- Alnitak and Alnilam, which means "string of pearls," and Mintaka -- are the only place in the sky were three blue super giant stars are lined up that close together.

Each of those stars are nearly 1,000 light years away and 20 times more massive than our sun, which means they will all explode in cataclysmic supernovae in much less time than when our average star, the sun, will blow up in 5 billion years. Blue giant stars have to burn through their prodigious amounts of fuel so rapidly to maintain their perfect equilibrium of the enormous weight of all their gas pushing inward and the fusion process pushing outward.

Since it is located right on the celestial equator, Orion's belt stars always rise due east and set due west and spend half their time visible in our evening sky and half their time visible in our morning sky. Using a pair of binoculars look at the middle star in the sword, located just to the left and below the belt stars, and you will see the Great Orion Nebula.

Located about 1,600 light years away, this hydrogen emission nebula is the closest of all the stellar nurseries in our Milky Way galaxy. The Hubble Space Telescope has photographed nearly 3,000 new stars recently born in this dramatic nebula, many of which can only be seen in infrared light, meaning that they are not even fully formed yet. A few hundred of those stars also have protoplanetary disks of dust around them, out of which planets are in the process of forming.

The amazing thing to remember when you look at this special place in our galaxy is that our own sun and earth were formed in a very similar fashion under very similar conditions 4.6 billion years ago.

Just a few weeks ago, the trusty Hubble Space Telescope -- already 18 years old and scheduled for its final service mission from the Space Shuttle soon -- discovered the first planet around another star ever seen directly in visible light. All the previous 300 planets were discovered using indirect methods like radial velocity and the transit method.

This planet, called Fomalhaut B, is located quite close by at only 25 light years out. It orbits around the 17th-brightest star in our sky, Fomalhaut in the constellation of Piscis Austrinus, just below the ecliptic in the southwestern sky below Capricorn, where Venus can be found later this month.

This planet orbits about 10 billion miles from its parent star, which is 10 times the distance of Saturn from our sun. This planet is three times more massive than Jupiter. That is about as heavy as that planet could be without completely destroying the vast dust belt around that star.

It was known since 1983 that Fomalhaut was a great candidate for possible planets, because an infrared satellite named IRAS saw a huge disk of dust only glowing in infrared light around this star. That ring is 20 billion miles across and has a sharp, well defined inner edge, which is exactly where this new planet was just found.

That same satellite also discovered a similar protoplanetary dust disk around the star Vega, on which Carl Sagan's book and movie "Contact" was based.

As if all that weren't exciting enough, a complete family portrait of three planets seen directly in infrared light all orbiting the same star was just taken with a ground-based telescope. They orbit a star called HR 8799, about 130 light years away and just visible without binoculars in the constellation of Pegasus.

Those planets formed only 60 million years ago, so they are still young enough to be glowing with heat released as they formed and contracted. Those planets are about 10 times the size of Jupiter and are orbiting much farther out than Jupiter. The planetary system around HR 8799 seems to be a scaled-up version of our solar system, orbiting a larger and brighter star.

The highlights for this month include two spectacular conjunctions. One will occur on the first day of this month with the moon, Venus, and Jupiter and the next one at the end of the month with the moon, Mercury and Jupiter.

Look southwest about one hour after sunset on Dec. 1 and you will see Venus and Jupiter just two degrees apart with a slender waxing crescent moon just above and to the left of the pair of planets. The moon will be just below the pair on the last day of November, and it will be another 12 degrees farther above and to the left of the pair on the second of December.

Starting Dec. 28, look for an even thinner crescent moon right below Mercury and Jupiter in the evening sky about 40 minutes after sunset. Notice that Venus is still in the picture, but continues to climb above Jupiter at the rate of almost one degree per day, so it will be nearly 25 degrees away along the ecliptic by the end of the month.

The moon will pass just above Venus on the New Year's Eve, with Mercury and Jupiter just one degree apart.

Friday. First quarter moon is at 4:26 p.m.

Dec. 10. The moon will occult the Pleiades again, but you will need a telescope because the moon will be nearly full.

Dec. 12. Full moon is at 11:37 a.m. This will occur only five hours before the moon's closest approach to Earth for the whole year, making this the largest full moon since 1993. The tides will also be several feet higher than usual. This is also called the Cold, Moon before Yule, or Long Night Moon.

Dec. 13. Saturn is at quadrature at 90 degrees west of the sun in the sky. Saturn rises before midnight in Leo, but it can be best seen an hour or two before sunrise. Through a telescope, notice that its rings are nearly edge-on, tilted less than one degree, which make the planet, appear much dimmer than usual. The Geminid Meteor shower also peaks tonight and tomorrow night, but all except for the brightest meteors will be washed out by the bright moonlight. The Geminids are usually one of our best showers, producing 60 meteors per hour.

Dec. 19. Last quarter moon is at 5:29 a.m.

Dec. 21. The winter solstice is at 7:04 a.m. The Ursid meteor shower peaks.

Dec. 25. Isaac Newton was born on this day in 1642.

Dec. 26. The moon is at apogee or farthest from the earth today.

Dec. 27. New moon is at 7:22 a.m. Johannes Kepler was born on this day in 1571. He discovered the three laws of planetary motion after his collaboration with the greatest observational astronomer of his time, Tycho Brahe. Kepler finally figured out that all the planets and moons orbit in ellipses and not perfect circles. An ellipse can be thought of as the shape a projected circle would make.