The Summer Triangle

My fam­ily some­times makes the trek to down­town Colum­bus to see Red, White and Boom. To tell the truth, I’m not in love with the expe­ri­ence. The lights that are already in the sky are “boom” enough for me. A quiet evening under the stars from rural Ohio beats a series of explo­sions any day — or night.

Still, we spend a lot of nights dur­ing the sum­mer down­town. The con­certs at the Com­mons and the plays at Schiller Park are hard to resist.

Sum­mer is an espe­cially good time to expe­ri­ence the uni­verse because we spend a lot of time out­side any­way. While you’re wait­ing for the crowd to thin out after the fire­works or the Pop­corn Pops, why not just look up for a while?

Sadly, from deep in urban Cen­tral Ohio, you eas­ily will see three stars, but that unavoid­able fact can be a strange bless­ing, as well.

The hard­est part about get­ting started in stargaz­ing is learn­ing the con­stel­la­tions. The stars are a bit harder to see than they used to be because of all the street­lights that block the starry view from urban (and even sub­ur­ban) loca­tions. Still, some stars are easy to see, even from down­town. They make an excel­lent start­ing point for learn­ing the sky.

The sum­mer sky is dom­i­nated by the Sum­mer Tri­an­gle, three bright stars ris­ing in the east right now. To see them, you’ll have to wait until 10:45 p.m. or so, when the sky has at last got­ten decently dark.

The top star of the tri­an­gle is Vega, the bright­est star in the sum­mer sky. Just below Vega is a small par­al­lel­o­gram of fainter stars. Vega and the par­al­lel­o­gram make up the main stars of the con­stel­la­tion Lyra, the Lyre.

Down and to the left of Lyra is the con­stel­la­tion, Cygnus, the Swan, known pop­u­larly as the North­ern Cross. The cross is lying on its side, so that the top star of the cross, which dom­i­nates the con­stel­la­tion, sits at the far left. You’ve found the star Deneb, the sec­ond star of the Sum­mer Triangle.

Far to the right and slightly down from Deneb is the star Altair in the con­stel­la­tion Aquila, the Eagle. Many of the Eagle’s stars are hard to see, but it’s hard to miss fiery Altair, which rep­re­sents the beak of the noble bird.

If you’re observ­ing these stars from dark, rural skies, you may actu­ally have a harder time find­ing them than if you are observ­ing from an urban loca­tion. From down­town Colum­bus or from your seat at Pop­corn Pops, you may see only the three stars of the tri­an­gle. From a sub­ur­ban loca­tion, you should be able to see most of the stars on the accom­pa­ny­ing star map.

Under rural skies, this por­tion of the night explodes into a glo­ri­ous con­fu­sion of stars. Be patient, and while you’re at it, get out you binoc­u­lars and check out the envi­rons of Cygnus. With your unaided eye, you will see the faint band of light that the ancients called the Milky Way. Your binoc­u­lars will show you that the Milky Way is made up of uncount­able stars.

Remem­ber, if you don’t learn these con­stel­la­tions and teach them to your chil­dren, no one will. You can hardly expect your children’s schools to take a field trip to the mid­dle of nowhere in the mid­dle of July. Par­ents have taught their chil­dren about the stars of sum­mer for thou­sands of gen­er­a­tions, and this sim­ple, pro­found knowl­edge will be lost if a sin­gle gen­er­a­tion fails to do so. For the sake of your children’s chil­dren, go out and see the stars of summer.

Plan­ets

Yel­low Sat­urn is still vis­i­ble to the south­west just after dark. Look for it above the bright star Spica. You’ll need a tele­scope to see the rings, however.

Fainter and red­der Mars is below and to the left of Spica and Mars.

A note about Perkins in July:

We don’t do night­time pro­grams in July. There is no night­time in July, prac­ti­cally speak­ing. Instead, we do Sat­ur­day after­noon pro­grams in our Cel­e­bra­tion of the Sun series, wherein you will be able to look at the sun through our bat­tery solar-safe tele­scopes. Please call first for more infor­ma­tion at 740–363-1257.

Tom Burns is the direc­tor of Ohio Wes­leyan University’s Perkins Obser­va­tory, and he would be very happy to answer your ques­tions or sell you a ticket to one of its upcom­ing Friday-night pro­grams. He can be reached at tlburns@owu.edu or 740–363‑1257.

Posted by Tom Burns on Jul 1 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.