The Summer Triangle

By Jim McKeegan

Long ago, favorite stories often were told around an evening campfire. Pointing at the night sky, a storyteller might invite listeners to see parts of the story among the stars. Groups of bright stars were imagined to be pictures of famous heroes. Sometimes the star patterns became animals and monsters, sometimes tools, or even a musical instrument.

Today we call these star-pictures constellations. Many of the stories that we tell about the constellations come from the Greeks and Romans. These stories are at least two thousand years old, and many are even older.

Summer is a great time to spend an evening under the stars. See if you can find these constellations in the summer sky, then share their stories with your family and friends.

Three Bright Stars
At the end of the day, watch where the Sun goes down. Turn your back to the setting Sun. You will be facing east. As the sky slowly darkens, look for three stars to appear in the eastern sky.

The first star to appear will be Vega. (You can say it VEE-guh or VAY-guh). Vega is the brightest star of summer. It’s about three times as big as our star, the Sun, and is 25 light-years away. A light-year is six trillion (that’s 6,000,000,000,000) miles!

Six trillion miles might seem like a big number, but it really isn’t when we’re talking about the stars. At 150 trillion miles away, Vega is one of the stars closest to us.

Vega is part of the constellation Lyra (LIE-rah), which is Latin for lyre. A lyre is a type of harp. When the sky becomes dark, look for fainter stars to either side of Vega. These stars make the top of the harp. Just below Vega are two stars that might seem to hold the harp’s strings.

An old Greek story says that the god Hermes made this harp out of a turtle shell. The sun-god, Apollo, later owned it before passing it on to his son Orpheus. Orpheus was an excellent musician, and the music he made was magical. Wild animals would come to listen to his harp. Even the trees and flowers turned toward Orpheus when he played. It was said that his harp was placed in the sky to remind us of the beauty of music.

Down and to the left of Vega is Deneb (DEN-ebb). Deneb is much farther away—about 1,600 light-years distant. To shine so brightly from so far away, Deneb must be very bright indeed. In fact, it’s about seventy thousand times as bright as the Sun.

Deneb is the brightest star in the constellation Cygnus (SIG-nus), which means swan in Latin. Deneb is the tail of the swan. On a dark night, you can see the stars that mark the long body and neck of the swan stretching under Lyra. The swan’s wide wings open away from its body.

One story about Cygnus says that the swan was once a boy. To save his friend from drowning, the boy Cygnus dived into a river. As a reward for his bravery, Cygnus was changed into a swan. Now he swims forever among the stars, a reminder of the power of friendship.

The last of the three stars is Altair (all-TAYR). Altair is to the south of Vega and Deneb. It’s a white star about 17 light-years away, which makes it one of the few bright stars that are closer to us than Vega.

Altair is within the constellation Aquila (ACK-will-a), which is Latin for eagle. Look for these two fainter stars on either side of Altair. These three stars make up the head of the eagle, with Altair as its eye. The eagle’s head is turned to one side and is looking down toward the ground at this time of year.

Aquila was said to be the pet eagle of Zeus, the king of the Greek gods. Zeus often gave Aquila special jobs. One of the eagle’s most important jobs was to bring back the lightning bolts that Zeus threw toward Earth.

Together, these three stars are called the Summer Triangle, which is well known and easy to recognize. But scientists do not think of this pattern as a constellation, since its stars already belong to constellations from long ago.

The Milky Way
On a clear, dark night, away from bright lights, you might notice something special about the Summer Triangle. That fuzzy band of stars running through it is part of our galaxy, the Milky Way. The Milky Way is a collection of billions of stars, including our own Sun. For a real treat, look at this area with binoculars. You’ll see thousands of stars. You can’t help but be amazed at the beauty of the summer sky!

The Summer Triangle will be in the sky for several months. Watch it move across the sky as summer changes into fall. You might look for other patterns in the stars, too, and make up tales about your own star-pictures. When you and your family look up on a clear, dark night, the sky will be filled with stories!