Content

• Steps
• Tips

For those who live in the northern hemisphere, summer nights can seem simply dazzling, because they shine with hundreds, and in fact thousands of stars. While they can be daunting at first, you can memorize and navigate the basic constellations of the night sky using the following simple steps as a guide.

Steps

1. 1 The diagram above shows a typical summer night sky (in this case, July 14 at 9:00 pm / 10:00 pm in case of daylight savings time) at a latitude of approximately 35 ° north latitude (near the latitudes of Tennessee cities ( USA), Tokyo (Japan) and Tehran (Iran)). Looking straight up, facing south, you will notice three bright stars to the left (east). These are the stars Vega, Altair and Deneb. They form a large asterism called the Summer Triangle.
2. 2 After finding the Summer Triangle, you can find three constellations that these three stars belong to: Lyra, Eagle and Swan.
3. 3 To our right (west) and a little further north you'll find the Big Dipper (also known as the Plow), which is actually another asterism (we'll take a closer look at it later). Follow the arc of the handle south towards a very bright star; "arc to Arcturus", a sparkling orange star marking the constellation Bootes.
4. 4 Let's find another bright constellation. It is perhaps the most beautiful summer constellation, Scorpio, which lies further south. The brightest star in Scorpio is Antares, the red giant.
5. 5 Now that we've found some of the brightest constellations, let's use them to find some of the dimmer ones. Draw an invisible line from Deneb through Vega and a little further west. This will lead you to the constellation Hercules.
6. 6 Let's head west back to the bright star Arcturus. Since we have already followed the "arc to Arcturus", we can now move to Spica, which is the brightest star in the constellation Virgo.
7. 7 Moving back south towards Scorpio, we can discover the Teapot asterism, which consists of the brightest stars in the constellation Sagittarius (interesting fact: the area above the "nose" and between the Scorpio indicates the direction towards the center of the Milky Way, our home galaxy).
8. 8 Now we go back to the north. Earlier we called the Big Dipper asterism. In fact, it is part of a large constellation known as Ursa Major. If you follow the invisible line drawn through the two stars opposite the handle ("pointers"), you will find that they almost accurately point to the North Star at the end of the handle of the Small Dipper, another asterism. In fact, this is Ursa Minor.
9. 9 If you continue to lead the line through the North Star, then you will come to the constellation, which lies almost opposite the Big Dipper. This is Cassiopeia, one of the main autumn constellations.
10. 10 Finally, we will find one of the smallest of the 88 official constellations, south of the Summer Triangle. This is the constellation Dolphin (which really looks like its namesake).

Tips

• You don't need any fancy equipment to find these objects in the starry sky, just a dark sky and your own eyes.