This weekend is a good time to look for Pisces the Fish. Pisces is one of those constellations everyone has heard of since it is a zodiacal constellation.
The zodiac is a narrow zone which stretches about 9 degrees on either side of the ecliptic, the apparent path in the sky the sun follows on its yearly journey. Pisces, like several other zodiacal constellations, has a hard time living up to its reputation because it is faint and somewhat hard to find, though it is large.
Look south around 8:30 p.m. The square of Pegasus the Winged Horse is nearly overhead high above the southern horizon. Pisces is supposed to be two fish, one facing west below Pegasus and the other facing north, just east of Pegasus and west of Aries the Ram.
Naturally, the constellation looks nowhere like what it is supposed to represent. To see Pisces, find the fairly bright square of Pegasus and look south to see seven fainter stars forming a misshapen heptagon, a seven-sided polygon. Six faint stars extend east of the heptagon, and then five stars extend north between Pegasus on the right (west) and Aries on the left (east) to complete the constellation. It’s a tough constellation to identify, but doing so gives a good feelings of accomplishment.