This is the time of year that I make time to pull an “all nighter” under the stars because there's so much see, and many of the planets are also adding to the celestial show.

If you can get out to the countryside all the better, but if you're watching from the outer suburbs it will still be worth losing some beauty sleep!

As soon as it's dark, check out the low western sky for the triangle made up of Saturn, Mars and the bright star, Spica. You can't miss it since they're the brightest objects in that part of the sky.

If you have a small telescope take at least a quick look at Saturn. It will be a little fuzzy because it's close to the horizon and that light has to pierce a thicker shield of Earth's atmosphere.

You should, however, be able to at least partially resolve the ring system of Saturn, made up of billions of ice covered boulders, rock, pebbles, and dust grains. What is amazing to me is that if you melted all of the ice in Saturn's ring system you would have more than 26 million times more water than all of Earth's oceans combined!

From 11 p.m. to 1 a.m. the biggest attraction in the celestial dome is that incredible ghostly band of milky light that stretches basically from the northern to southern horizon and essentially cuts the sky in half. That uneven heavenly ribbon is known as the Milky Way band.

All of the stars that we see at any time as we gaze into the nocturnal sky are members of the 300 to 400 billion stars that make up the spiral disk of our Milky Way galaxy.

Our sun and solar system live in one of the spiral arms of our galactic disk. That milky band that bisects the heavens is the combined light of the billions of stars that make up the thickest part, or plane, of our Milky Way galaxy, which stretches out to a diameter of more than 100,000 light years.

As vast as the diameter of the Milky Way disk is, it's very thin by comparison, estimated by astronomers to be only about one thousand light years thick, so that's why we see the ribbon of light that makes late summer nights so special.

By the way, keep in mind that just one light year equals just under six trillion miles!

If you feel a little ambitious, you can pull up star maps on free planetarium programs like “Stellarium” or use your smart phone loaded with a GPS enhanced star map app, or maybe you can use my new book “Stars,” published by Adventure Publications (shameless plug!) to help you find and point your telescope and/or binoculars at wonderful targets in and around the Milky Way band.

You can also have a lot of fun just lying back on a reclining lawn chair and slowly going on a celestial treasure hunt by scanning the Milky Way band from one end to another. I guarantee that if you take your time you'll run into some really cool stuff.

It can be just a magical time, especially if the crickets are chirping away and the owls and night hawks are sounding off now and then.

If the sandman doesn't get you and you can hang in there toward morning twilight, or if that's when you're up anyway to start your day like yours truly, you'll see two super bright stars in the eastern sky.

These are the brightest planets we can see from Earth, Venus and Jupiter. Venus is the brightest one positioned to the lower left of Jupiter. As bright as Venus is, it's pretty underwhelming viewing it with any size telescope. All you see is a tiny bright oval and that's it. Venus is completely cloud covered and the clouds are reflecting a lot of our sun's light.

Jupiter is much more interesting with a telescope even though it's a lot farther away at nearly 500 million miles from Earth. Its enormous size makes up for the distance and you can actually see up to four of its brighter moons that resemble tiny stars on either side of the biggest planet in our solar system.

Believe it or not, even without a telescope you may be able to see Jupiter's moons if it's extra clear and your vision is sharp. If you really stare at Jupiter for an extended time you may see little appendages off the bright dot of Jupiter.

Just to the lower right of Venus, just before the predawn twilight, you'll see an old friend of yours and mine. It's the bright constellation Orion the Hunter, the stalwart of the winter evening sky.

One really nice thing about morning stargazing is that you see the same constellations that you do in the evening sky about four to five months later. The early bird gets the worm and a preview of upcoming evening stargazing!

Once you start seeing that morning twilight it's off to bed with you and hopefully you can catch some winks before you take on the rest of the day. Thank God for coffee!