WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - Astro Minute: "The Summer Triangle, Reboot"

Episode Date: September 26, 2024

Learn to spot this celestial guidepost in today's episode of Astro Minute!

Welcome to the Astro Minute, where we're exploring the universe 60 seconds at a time. I'm Lauren Smith, and today we're looking for the Summer Triangle. The Summer Triangle is an important stellar guidepost that's nearly overhead in the early autumn evenings. It features three of the most prominent stars in the sky and a swath of our Milky Way galaxy. Its brightest corner is Vega, the third brightest star in the northern autumn sky, and our future pole star, in about 12,000 years. The triangle's long corner is nearby Altair, and it's a big star. its third corner is Deneb, which is the top of the Northern Cross and a distant super giant star that's a whopping 200,000 times more luminous than our sun.

The fuzzy band running through the triangle is our own Milky Way galaxy, and while binoculars won't reveal the black hole or exoplanets in this exciting region of the sky, they will reveal rich fields of stars, star clusters, and nebulae. That's your Astro Minute.