Celestial Archer

Rising low over the southern horizon on summer evenings is the ancient constellation Sagittarius, the celestial archer. Represented as a centaur as early as the 2nd century, Sagittarius sits at the base of the summer Milky Way, though most urban observers will not be able to detect the faint glow of the Milky Way behind it, instead seeing only the brighter stars that form an asterism known as The Teapot.

Find Sagittarius situated just above the horizon later in the evening for northern latitudes. Sagittarius is one of 13 constellations in the Zodiac, the constellations through which the Sun appears to travel every year along the ecliptic. The area surrounding Sagittarius is well worth a scan with binoculars or even the naked on a clear night away from the city, as this region is one of the richest of the Milky Way, offering countless nebulae, clusters, and starry fields. A star chart will guide you to the showpieces like the Lagoon Nebula and Trifid Nebula, easily glimpsed with the naked eye from a dark site, and even more stunning with binoculars or a small telescope.

But there’s one more important target in this area, the precise center of our own Milky Way galaxy. While it’s too dense to observe directly in visible light, the right hand side of The Teapot points to the location in the sky marking the galactic center, a location we now know is home to a supermassive black hole. In fact, with the aid of infrared telescopes, stars close to this black hole have been observed orbiting it for the past 20 years.

Before the summer ends, go out and find Sagittarius, the archer guarding the center of our galaxy!