Without a doubt, the highlight for stargazing in August is the annual Perseid Meteor Shower. The meteors have already begun falling and the show peaks around midnight on Aug. 12 when you may see more than 50 "shooting stars" per hour. It'll be especially good this year because the moon will be absent from the heavens, leaving dark skies in the countryside.

I'll have more about the Perseids in next week's Starwatch column.

With days getting shorter, you won't have to stay up quite as late to begin your stargazing adventures. Probably the first two stars you'll see toward the end of evening are actually the planets Jupiter and Venus. They'll both be making a brief appearance in the low western skies before they set.

Venus is the brighter of the two, but neither of the planets are really worthy of much telescope time because they're both so close to the horizon and their light has to pass through a lot of Earth's obscuring atmosphere.

The summer constellations, however, are in full bloom now and there's much to gaze upon. If you're lucky enough to be in the countryside, somewhat away from light pollution, you're in for a real show. Summer evenings are the best time to see the Milky Way band, a ribbon of light stretching nearly overhead from the northern to southern horizon.

All the stars we see in our skies are all members of the Milky Way, a galaxy in the shape of a spiral disk. When you see that milky band of light, you are looking into the main plane of the Milky Way - where most of the stars are. In fact, there's so many of them that they are bathing us in a continual glow. The rest of the stars we see in the sky outside this Milky Way band are all stars that are relatively close neighbors of our Sun.

If you follow the Milky Way band toward the southern horizon you'll run right into one of my favorite constellations, what I call the little teapot, more formally know as the constellation Sagittarius the Archer.

Sagittarius is supposed to be a half-man and half-horse creature shooting an arrow. But it is much, much easier to see it as a teapot.

To the right or west of the teapot is Scorpius the Scorpion, a rare constellation that actually looks like a Scorpion.

It kind of looks as if the little teapot is pouring hot liquid on the scorpion's tail, making it curl up even more.

Over in the northwestern sky, the Big Dipper is hanging by its handle. The much fainter Little Dipper, with the North Star, Polaris, at the end of the handle, is right up there as well.

In the northeast is a giant "W," otherwise known as the constellation Cassiopeia the Queen. That "W" outlines a throne that Queen Cassiopeia is eternally tied to as punishment for offending Hera, the queen of the gods of Mount Olympus.

Nearly overhead is the Summer Triangle, made up of three bright stars; Vega, Altair, and Deneb. All three of these stars are the brightest in their respective constellations Lyra the Harp, Cygnus the Swan and Aquila the Eagle.

The Summer Triangle is not only a great tool to help you find these constellations, but many other surrounding celestial portraits.

Mike Lynch is an amateur astronomer and professional broadcast meteorologist for WCCO Radio on Minneapolis and author of the new book, "Pennsylvania Starwatch" available at bookstores and at his Web site www.lynchandthestars.com.