Summer heat and stars to see

June 21 marked the beginning of the Summer Solstice. Our Milky Way galaxy's heart is the main attraction; filling the summer constellations Scorpius and Sagittarius and arcing across the sky. In addition, there are many Messier objects in the Milky Way's heart that are easily seen by even small telescopes. M8, the Lagoon Nebula, is a large, red star forming nebula located just west of the tip of the "teapot". Slightly above M8, is M20, the Trifid Nebula. The Trifid is a beautiful rose-like red nebula along with a blue reflective part. Rounding out the emission nebulas are M16 (Eagle Nebula) and M17 (Omega Nebula). The Hubble Telescope took a classic image of the gaseous pillars in M16.

With so much to see in the Milky Way's heart, one almost forgets that there is much more sky to look at in the shortened summer nights. The asterism, the Summer Triangle, makes its way from east to west all throughout summer. The triangle is made up of the bright stars Vega in Lyra, Deneb in Cygnus and Altair in Aquila. Giving way to another asterism, Cygnus, the swan, is also referred to as the Northern Cross, a much larger cousin to its Southern counterpart. In Lyra, lays M57, the Ring Nebula. The Ring Nebula would be a hard object to spot in the vastness of the sky seeing that it is a little planetary nebula, but it is nicely situated right in between the bottom two stars of Lyra. This position make it possible to spot M57 even in a small telescope. Another well situated celestial object is the globular cluster M13 in Hercules. M13, the Great Globular, is one of the biggest and brightest seen in the northern hemisphere and lays nearly in the middle of two of the "keystone" stars in Hercules.

Planets: Brilliant Venus shines in the western sky as the Evening star. Look for Venus, Mars, Saturn and the Moon to make several lineups this summer while they are visible. Dwarf planets Pluto and Ceres are visible in the heart of the Milky Way. Rounding out the summer planets, Jupiter and Uranus are paired together in Pisces while Neptune, shining at only 7.8 magnitude, is in Aquarius.

Resources: Sky Maps, S&T Interactive Chart and Space.com.