Although summer in the northern hemisphere is waning, the Milky Way galaxy stretches from Sagittarius through Cygnus and beyond. The Cygnus arm of the Milky Way and it's Great Rift provides a startling contrast of bright and dark nebulosity, stars so numerous that they provide milky pathways through the sky. The Swan will be with us through the fall, until the constellation stands as a giant cross in the west on Christmas Day. The birds of summer are northernly creature. In addition the eagle is still flying, through he sets earlier than his more northerly companion. The constellation of Aquila was associated with one of the greatest of all predatorial birds, the Eagle. Some modern observers see an airplane rather than a bird. The location constellation on the celestial equater takes it high across the sky from East to West for observers at northern latitudes..

This sharp-sighted sky bird is dominated by the first magnitude star, Altair. This star is one of the closest bright stars in the sky, a mere 16 light years from our sun. This star is 1.5 times larger than our sun and rotates in a short 6 hours, causing the star itself to be flattened into an elliptical shape. It may be twice as large at the equator as it is a the poles. Altair is flanked by two stars, Alshain (beta) at mag 3.7 and Tarazed (gamma) at magnitude 2.7, making it easy to identify from even a suburban site.

Aquila is located in the summer Milky Way, near the dark rift that is called the Great Rift. Many of the stars in Aquila have long been shining in the galaxy and the constellation is the home of many planetary nebulae. The best of these are NGC 6751 and NGC 6781, they will be challenging but may be worth the reward. Panning through the constellation with binoculars will reveal the dark nebulae that abound in this constellation. For telescopes, the best of these is just west of Gamma Aquilae is B143, with two dark prongs that may been seen in an 8-inch telescope or greater. Nebulae like these are only detectable by the star studded fields they occupy.

On June 8, 1918, the Lick Observatory astronomer, E.E. Barnard and the young amateur, Leslie Peltier who was a well-known comet hunter and variable star observer both spotted a nova in Aquila that peaked out at an estimated magnitude of -1.4, V603 Aquilae. An even brighter nova was reported in the constellation in the year 389 that was said to outshine the planet Venus. The constellation harbors many planetary nebula due to the age of the stars located there. The galactic star cluster NGC 6709 at mag 8 contains about 40 stars. Aquila is not close to the center of the galaxy, however, that we can not see other galaxies that are located in the constellation. Notably, the galaxy NGC 6814, at mag 12.2 might be found in a larger amateur instrument.

--See You Under the Stars!
Astra for Astra's Almanac