Tonight's Sky: August

Produced by the Space Telescope Science Institute’s Office of Public Outreach in collaboration with NASA’s Universe of Learning partners: Caltech/IPAC, Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and Sonoma State University.

Musical track The Far River written by John Serrie, from the album And the Stars Go With You, courtesy of New World Music, Ltd. 

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 Text, August. Tonight's Sky. Constellations. Stylized drawings of a lion, a ram, and a bull. 

South, 9 PM. Looking up into the night sky filled with stars. Text, Warm August nights offer fine opportunities for stargazing as a flock of star-studded figures soars overhead. Southeast sky. A small diamond-shaped constellation with a line sticking up from its point. At the end of the line is a very bright star. Text, In the southeast lies Vega, one of the brightest stars in the sky. The Greeks made Vega the anchor of the small constellation Lyra, the lyre of Orpheus. A drawing appears over the constellation of a harp-like instrument shaped like an eagle with a head, wings, and a tail around the strings. Text, Lyra's main pattern is a small parallelogram that marks the strings of the instrument. Alongside Lyra sits Epsilon Lyrae, also known as the Double Double, a point of light consisting of two orbiting pairs of white stars. Ground-based view. An image of two glowing dots appearing to touch each other. Text, between the bottom two stars of the parallelogram is the Ring Nebula. Ground-based view, an image of a small ring-shaped nebula cloud. 

Zoom in on the Ring Nebula. A circle of pure translucent blue ringed by green-and-red clouds in an irregular circular shape. White stars stud the nebula. Text, visible light. NASA's Hubble Space Telescope reveals stunning details of this planetary nebula, a glowing shell of gas expelled by a dying star. The remnant core of the star—now a small, hot white dwarf—sits in the center of the shell, providing radiant energy that makes the gas glow. Our own sun may end its life this way in about 6 billion years. 

To the east of Lyra we find a second bright star: Deneb, a distant blue-white supergiant. An irregular X-shaped constellation, the bright star Deneb at the end of one of its lines. Text, Deneb marks the tail of Cygnus the Swan. A drawing of a swan appears over the X-shape, its wings and neck outstretched and Deneb at its tail. Text, Marking the head of Cygnus is Albireo, a showpiece double star for small telescopes. Ground-based view, a large bright yellow star next to a smaller white star. 

Text, Just south of the head of Cygnus lies a small pattern called Vulpecela, the fox. A short, line-shaped constellation. A drawing of a fox with a bird in its mouth appears, with its head over the line. Text, Vulpecula hosts the Dumbbell Nebula, another planetary nebula. Ground-based view, a small image of dim nebula. Zoom in on the Dumbbell Nebula. A brilliant butterfly or dumbbell-shaped nebula with a green cloudy center, yellow wings fading to deep red purple on either side. Bright pale blue stars gleam in the nebula. Text, The Spitzer Space Telescope's infrared view shows the expanding cloud of gas heated by the central remnant star—now a white dwarf. Astronomers think that the dumbbell shape of this nebula could be caused by the presence of a second star at the center. Eventually, the expelled gas of the nebula will dissipate into surrounding space, leaving only the white dwarf and its possible companion behind. 

To the south of Lyra and Cygnus lies another bright star of summer, Altair. An X-shaped constellation, at the end of one of its lines the bright star: Altair. A drawing of a flying eagle appears over the X. Text, Altair marks the shoulder of Aquila the Eagle. Just off the end of Aquila's outstretched tail lies an open star cluster, M11. Ground-based view, a cluster of many densely packed stars. Text, known as the Wild Duck Cluster, early observers thought it resembled a flock of ducks flying in a roughly V-shaped formation. 

Taken together, the three bright summer stars, Vega, Deneb, and Altair form the summer triangle. A triangle appears connecting the three stars in the sky. Text, Use the summer triangle as a guide to the stars and nebulae that glide through the late summer night. 

Celestial wonders await you in Tonight's Sky.