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Look for the lyre. Lyra the lyre is almost right overhead, a small constellation but important nonetheless. A lyre is a harp, and Lyra does look like that. It contains the brilliant star Vega, a bluish white star that in 14,000 years will be the North Star, as Polaris in Ursa Minor is now. Vega is triple the size of our own sun and one of the brightest stars in the sky. Lyra consists of four stars that form a small parallelogram and Vega, which is outside of this formation.
Seek out the swan. Cygnus the swan is also called the Northern Cross. It is in the shape of a cross and readily identifiable. Deneb is in Cygnus, the second corner of the famed Summer Triangle. A line drawn through the two “bowl” stars in the Big Dipper upwards will point right to Deneb, which is in the tail of the swan. Deneb is what is known as a super-giant; it is 60,000 times brighter than our own sun and 25 times as large. Only its incredible distance from us keeps it from being any higher than 20th on the list of bright stars we can see at night. Albeiro, a star that forms the “beak” of the swan, is a double star, two stars that orbit each other.
Complete the triangle with Altair in Aquila the Eagle. Altair is in the middle of what would be the eagle’s chest, as two other stars, one on each side in an almost perfectly straight line make up the bird’s wings. Altair and Aquila are southernmost of these three summer constellations. Between Altair and Deneb lie two small constellations, Sagitta the Arrow and Delphinus the Dolphin. Sagitta is above the line connecting the two brighter stars and the dolphin is below it. Faint stars comprise these two, but they sure do look like what they represent.
Take aim on Sagittarius. The Centaur or Archer, it lies in a region rich with stars in the Milky Way. There are numerous star clusters, many, many stars close together, in this summer constellation that looks more like a teapot than a centaur. Nebula, huge gaseous clouds leftover from exploded stars, are numerous in the region occupied by Sagittarius. This summer constellation is located below Aquilla in the sky. Its main body of stars resembles an upside down ladle or the aforementioned teapot.
Beware the heavenly scorpion. Always to the right of Sagittarius is Scorpius the scorpion, containing the red giant star Antares. The scorpion’s heart is marked by this star, which would extend all the way out to the orbit of Mars if it were our sun! Scorpius and Sagittarius never stray far from the horizon in the summer months; Scorpius looks like a large fish hook as well as the insect it is named after. It too has many interesting objects associated with the Milky Way within its boundaries. Scorpius in myth is the scorpion that killed the great hunter Orion; the Gods put them as far apart in the sky as possible--one a summer constellation and the other a winter group.