Week of Oct. 11-17, 2015

It's definitely been a long, hot summer here in the Desert Southwest, as I know it was throughout much of Earth's Northern Hemisphere. But now that cooler autumn temperatures have finally arrived, many of us have begun sorting through our closets to put away summer clothing for the upcoming season.

I don't about you, but I always seem to find one fewer coat hanger than there are pieces of clothing in the closet. Where these things go during the long summer months is anyone's guess.

Perhaps its all part of the universe's conservation of mass effort, but Mother Nature seems to know this problem is coming, and provides a solution in the heavens. It's called the Coat Hanger, and it's one of my favorite star groupings visible at this time of year.

To find it, go outdoors after dark and locate the Summer Triangle. This is a huge figure made up of the three brightest stars high in the western sky after dark: Vega, Altair and Deneb. Vega is the brightest of the three stars. Below and to its left lies Altair. Above Vega (and faintest of the trio) is Deneb.

Along the triangle's western side — about one-third of the way from Altair to Vega — you might spot a hazy region of light if the sky is dark and your vision is good. This unusual spot was described some 1,051 years ago by the Persian astronomer Al Sufi in his "Book of Fixed Stars." Of course, without the benefit of optical aid, Al Sufi didn't know exactly what he was seeing, except that it appeared as a fuzzy patch of light near the western edge of the Milky Way.

Today things are much different. Even the least-expensive binoculars aimed in this direction will offer a quite a visual treat. Here you'll see 10 faint stars that outline a perfect shape of a tiny sideways coat hanger — a straight line of six with a "hook" of four on one side.

Of course, stars are distributed randomly throughout space, and the figure we see is simply the result of the human mind's attempt to make order out of this randomness. In fact, look at any area of stars in the sky and, given enough time and imagination, you will almost always be able to devise recognizable figures.

The Coat Hanger, also known to astronomers as Brocchi's Cluster or more formally as Collinder 399, is probably not a star cluster at all. It was in the 1970s and 1980s that astronomers began to suspect that many of its stars might be moving together — as if part of a stellar family.

Today, however, thanks to observations by the European Space Agency's Hipparcos satellite, it appears that the stars of the Coat Hanger may be separated by hundreds of light years and are drifting through space in arbitrary directions and speeds. In other words, these may not be part of a cluster after all.

Whether or not the Coat Hanger is a cluster will keep astronomers debating for years, but for amateur stargazers it really doesn't matter; it's surely one fun sight to seek out on cool autumn nights.

Visit Dennis Mammana at www.dennismammana.com. To read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.