![]() Now I can't play the harp but there's no piano or clarinet constellation so I’ll take it. And here we have birds and a musical instrument made of stars, so what could be more perfect. But this is one of my most favorite parts of the sky because I love stars. So I have to say I see that now more than anything else. So perhaps you can imagine another bird soaring overhead with its wings spread wide but more often than not people tell me they see a stingray or a manta ray. Then last but not least we have Altair which is part of Aquila the eagle. But those stars are so far away that by the time their light reaches us, their light kind of combines and we see it as one star. There are two stars there orbiting around and around each other in what's called a binary star system. Now at the other end of the bird, the head of the bird, there's a star that is called Albireo and it's kind of in the center of the triangle and the neat thing about Albireo is it looks like it's one star when it's actually two. Imagine a bird soaring overhead, with its wings spread wide. Then over here we have Deneb, which is at the tail end of a cross-shaped constellation called Cygnus the swan. Vega, together with some dim stars next to it forms a little harp called Lyra. But each of those stars that I pointed out is part of an official constellation. You can kind of think of that as an unofficial constellation or a pattern of stars that's just really popular and gets talked about a lot. And so many people notice this specific triangle, that it's been given a name, the summer triangle and it's talked about as if it's an official constellation, when it's actually an example of something called an asterism. So first of all it's made of three very bright stars: Vega, Deneb and Altair. There are zillions of them, they're everywhere, but I will concede that this particular triangle is rather special and i'll tell you why. Seriously, how many triangles can you make up in the sky? All you need are three stars. ![]() Now normally I would poke fun at a pattern of stars shaped like a triangle, because it's not very imaginative. If we look high up in the southeast, there is a very large triangle in the sky. So let's go check out what the sky looks like sometime in mid July around 10 p.m. Now spring is my favorite season, but summer brings my favorite sky. Well summer is well underway and that means night after night we can see more and more of the summer evening sky. Before we get started I do want to mention that this is a 360 video, so at any time feel free to take your mouse and just drag the image around. Hey everyone Liz Kliemak here, Planetarium Manager at the South Carolina State Museum.
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