Week of July 12-18, 2026
I don't know about you, but the last thing I want on a warm summer night is a cup of hot tea, yet that's exactly what appears to be brewing in the southern sky just after dark this week.
During July evenings, we can find a couple of prominent star groupings in this area. You may be familiar with them: Sagittarius, the archer, and Scorpius, the scorpion.
Sagittarius is often depicted as a centaur, a mythical half-man and half-horse from ancient Greek and Roman days, though it may have originated much earlier. The constellation seems to personify the Archer Nergal, a god of war found inscribed on ancient Sumerian cuneiform tablets. It's even included as a "Horse's Head" or "Horseman" in the 3,000-year-old zodiac of India, while the human part of the figure is depicted by a fan of lion's tails owned by the wife of an Indian ruler.
Of course, you can search for a centaur or archer among the stars if you'd like, but if you'd prefer to save your sanity, forget about these ancient ideas and look instead for the outline of an old-fashioned teapot. Here you'll find eight stars that trace its body, handle, lid and spout.
Check out the accompanying sky map, and you'll find even more interesting figures. The teapot appears to be pouring tea into a cup outlined by the curving tail of Scorpius, the scorpion. To the left of the teapot, you'll find a small sugar spoon, and below it a nice slice of lemon formed by the southern star grouping Corona Australis, the Southern Crown.
And if you're viewing the sky far from city lights, you'll see a hazy cloud of "vapor" billowing upward from the teapot's spout. This is the Milky Way that seems to rise out of the southern horizon and stretch completely across the sky to the north.
The section of the Milky Way just above the teapot's spout marks the direction of our galaxy's center. Of course, no one can see the core directly because of all the gobs of interstellar material filling the nearly 26,000 lightyears that separate us from it, but astronomers know that it's home to a supermassive black hole they've named Sagittarius A* (the A* is pronounced AY-star).
You'll surely notice that the Milky Way is not uniform in brightness but is mottled with dark rifts known to astronomers as giant molecular clouds, or GMCs. These are massive clouds of interstellar material inside of which new stars and planetary systems are being formed.
Scan binoculars along the Milky Way on a clear, dark night, and you'll be impressed by all you can see. This will reveal not only countless stars invisible to the eye but dozens of deep-sky objects, or "faint fuzzies," as astronomers like to call them; these include star clusters and gaseous nebulae. All will appear as small, hazy smudges of light, and if you've got a small telescope, aim it toward them for an even closer and more impressive view.
Now, I'm still not in the mood for hot tea on a warm summer night ... but a glass of iced tea? That I'll take!
Visit Dennis Mammana at dennismammana.com. To read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.
A couple of prominent star groupings are visible in the southern night sky this month.
View Comments