Start your sky gazing with a look at the ‘tea pot’

Published 6:38 pm Friday, September 7, 2007

Remember the old kid’s song, “I’m a little teapot, short and stout, here is my handle and here is my spout”?

Well, one of the classic constellations in the summer sky is Sagittarius, and it really does look like a quaint little teapot in the low southern sky after evening twilight.

You can easily find the handle on the left and the spout on the right. It even appears to be pouring its celestial brew on the tail of Scorpio, the Scorpion, its neighbor to the west.

Now if you are a mythological purist, which isn’t all bad, the constellation Sagittarius is a centaur a creature with a human head and the body, tail and legs of a horse shooting a bow and arrow.

Lots of luck seeing Sagittarius as a centaur with a bow and arrow. You’re much better off looking for the little teapot.

Not only is Sagittarius the teapot a cute little constellation, it’s in an important part of the sky.

It lies in the foreground of the center of our Milky Way galaxy.

All of the stars we see in our part of the Milky Way, which at last count may number more than 500 billion, form the shape of a giant spiral 100,000 light years across.

When we see that bright collective glow of stars in the dark summer skies running from north to south, we are looking edgewise into our galaxy.

The glow around Sagittarius may be a little brighter because it’s in the general direction of the Milky Way’s center. That glow would be almost as bright as a full moon, but there are a lot of dark interstellar clouds and dust that block the heart of our galaxy from our view.

It’s well worth it to scan around Sagittarius the teapot with binoculars or a small telescope. There are all kinds of neat star clusters and nebulae you can see.

In fact, just above the spout of the teapot you can see the famous Lagoon nebulae with your naked eye, if it’s dark enough outside. In that bright hydrogen gas cloud 4,500 light years away, new stars are constantly being born.

By the way, one light year equals about 6 trillion miles.

Mike Lynch is an amateur astronomer and professional broadcast meteorologist for WCCO Radio in Minneapolis and author of the new book ‘Washington Starwatch,’ available at bookstores and on his Web site, www.lynchandthestars.com.