Clear skies tonight, waxing moon dominates

Widespread clear skies are expected across the central and eastern U.S. Get outside and see what the night sky has to offer.

AccuWeather Astronomy friend Deirdre Horan captured the first quarter moon Wednesday evening from Dublin, Ireland.

For starters, we have the waxing moon. You won't miss it this evening. It will be close to the Pleiades cluster. This may not be the best night to observe the Pleiades as the moon will be quite bright. But, this is a great target for the backyard telescope.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">The Pleiades – also known as the Seven Sisters, or as M45 – as this beautiful star cluster appears through binoculars, via Project Nightflight. <a href="https://t.co/can6rWeOni">pic.twitter.com/can6rWeOni</a></p>&mdash; Maria Sobina Yu (@SobinaYu) <a href="https://twitter.com/SobinaYu/status/947107473151815681?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 30, 2017</a></blockquote>
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This is a very interesting feature. It is one of the closest star clusters to Earth, and the most obvious to the naked eye. The cluster features the hottest type of stars, blue stars. They are fairly young as well, with estimates at 100 million years. Read more about the Pleiades cluster.

The moon is waxing, and on it's way to become full next week. Of course, this will be no ordinary full moon. It will also be a blue moon, a supermoon and a blood moon!
This will be the first time this has happened over North America since 1866. Brian Lada has put together an awesome article on the event. Be sure to check out Brian's write-up here.

Not too many things are free anymore; however, looking at the night sky is still one of those things. Thanks for reading! Just look up, you never know what you will see.