In the 70 years since I was shone Saturn in a small telescope by my eighth-grade science teacher and became enamored with the sky, I’ve never figured out how to see the constellation Sagittarius as an archer. Sagittarius is a centaur. A mythical creature that has the body of a horse and the torso and head of a man. According to the legend, Sagittarius is shooting an arrow at the scorpion which has just killed Orion, the hunter. (He’s a bad shot because the little constellation Sagitta, the arrow, is not headed toward Scorpius, but is way up near Aquila the eagle!) Sagittarius doesn’t look like a centaur with a bow. For most skywatchers, he’s a teapot!
Hint: go out and re-find the constellations we introduced in the last few weeks. Cygnus sort of looks like a swan. Lyra can be seen as a harp. I can sort of imagine Aquila’s stars as an eagle. Scorpius certainly looks like a scorpion. See https://skymaps.com/skymaps/tesmn2308.pdf if you need a refresher sky map. Sagittarius doesn’t look like a centaur to me. You can find the constellation by looking for a teapot asterism of stars just to the east (left) of the scorpion. Look low in the southeast about 9 PM or due south later in the evening. (See the image)
The “teapot” of Sagittarius is in the region of the sky where the Milky Way is brightest.
One of the things I always asked my astronomy classes at Ole Miss was, “How many of you have seen the Milky Way?” Very few responded. This is because modern security lighting or the presence of a bright Moon in the sky can make the sky brighter than the faint glow of the billions of far-away stars in the direction of our galaxy’s center. The galactic center is just above the spout of the teapot. Try to see if you can see the Sagittarius “star cloud” looking like steam rising from the spout of the teapot.
The center of our galaxy is the site of a supermassive black hole with a mass of 4 million suns. It’s about 28,000 light years away. You won’t see it because it’s hidden behind clouds of dust. (More on this later.) Between Earth and the galactic center are two of our galaxy’s spiral arms. These spiral arms are where we find some beautiful clouds of gas and dust where stars are born. These clouds are called nebulae. Some that are just beginning to collapse into stars are cold and dark. Some are glowing with hot gas heated by young stars. Some older clouds have blown the gas and dust away and we see clusters of young stars revealed.
If you download the sky map, you’ll see several M-objects listed near Sagittarius. Many are visible in binoculars as fuzzy stars. Your county library has books describing these. See if a friend has a small telescope. Encourage them to get it out to share with the neighbors. Three of my favorites are M-22, a globular cluster with half a million stars just above the teapot’s lid, and M-8 and M-17, star forming nebulae above the teapot’s spout. You’ll want to observe away from street lights and when the Moon is out of the sky. Good hunting!
For questions or comments: James Hill, Mississippi NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador. jhill6333@gmail.com
