Now that it gets darker a lot sooner in the evening, it’s easier to get out there and stargaze before the sandman starts working on your eyelids and you end up staying up so late you’re dozing off at work the next day.

You can spend a lot more time with your telescope and even just a nice pair of binoculars. There are a lot of celestial treasures among the constellations in the late summer sky.

Star clusters, nebulae, double stars, and even whole other galaxies outside our Milky Way are buried to the naked eye, but with a little patience and optical aid you can dig them out.

Four of the nicest jewels of the heavens right now are nearly overhead at the end of evening twilight, around 8:30 p.m.

The easiest one to see is the star Albireo, the second brightest star in the constellation Cygnus the Swan, otherwise known as the Northern Cross. The best way to find it is to face directly south and look directly overhead.

The brightest star you see is Vega, the brightest star in the constellation Lyra the Harp. Vega is also the third-brightest nighttime star we see in the Butler skies. Anyway, make a fist and extend your clenched fist at arm’s length.

About two fists at arm’s length to the lower left of Vega look for the Northern Cross. The moderately bright star at the foot of the diagonally orientated cross is Albireo.

To the naked eye, Albireo looks like any other star in the sky, but with even a pair of binoculars, you can see that not only is Albireo a double star, but a colorful pair.

One star has a golden hue and the other is distinctly blue. I guarantee you’ll love what you see.

The double stars of Albireo are about 430 light years away, with just one light-year equaling nearly six trillion miles. Astronomers don’t know for sure but there’s a good chance that the two stars of Albireo may be gravitationally bound to each other which would make them a binary star system.

The two stars are separated by around 350 billion miles. If they were a binary star system they would orbit each other once every 100.000 years. Don’t wait for that or you will fall asleep at the work meeting the next day.

By the way it was discovered in the mid-’70s that the golden star of Albireo is actually binary star but there’s no way you could split the components unless you had a humongous telescope!

The second celestial gem up in the high south sky is Messier Object 13, better known as the great Hercules Cluster, one of the true wonders of the sky, residing in the faint constellation Hercules the Hero.

The best way to find that is to once again face south and find the bright star Vega. Look for a trapezoid of four faint stars you should be able to see with the naked eye unless you really have a lot of light pollution. That trapezoid is pretty much the center of the Hercules constellation.

About a third of the way from the upper right to the lower right side of the trapezoid you’ll find the Hercules Cluster. You won’t see it with the naked eye but with a good pair of binoculars or even better, a telescope, you’ll see what at first looks like a spherical fuzz ball.

If you have strong enough optics and especially if you can see it from darker countryside skies, you’ll see that it’s actually a cluster of many stars, known as a globular cluster.

This is the best one in our skies. Astronomers figure it’s about 25,000 light years away, which equals about 145,000 trillion miles. There may be up to a million stars crammed into an area a little more than 800 trillion miles wide.

Through even a moderate telescope you can see some individual stars at the edge. As it is with all telescopic objects, though, look at the cluster for extended periods of time through the eyepiece of your scope to let your eyes get use to the darkness of the field.

I absolutely love showing off the great Hercules Cluster with giant telescopes at my star parties.

The last celestial treasure to search for is also the most elusive: Messier Object 57, the Ring Nebula. It’s another planetary nebula that actually looks like a ring. It shows a slightly bluish tint that reminds me of a little cosmic smoke ring.

The Ring Nebula lays in the constellation Lyra the Harp, between two of the four stars that make a little parallelogram allegedly outlining the little celestial harp. Just keep scanning between the two stars that make up the bottom end of the parallelogram opposite the bright star Vega.

At first, the Ring Nebula looks like a faint little grayish star, but if your scope is powerful enough you may be able to resolve the ring.

Finding the Ring Nebula does require a lot of patience, but it’s definitely worth the effort.

Planetary nebulas are stars that are blowing off the last of atmospheric gases as they shrink down to a white dwarf star about the size of the sun.

This will happen to our own sun in about six to seven billion years. That’s when our sun will officially retire!

Celestial hugging

Tonight, the new crescent moon will be just to the left of the very bright planet Venus. It’ll be a fantastic site in the very low western sky toward the end of evening twilight. Don’t wait too late into the evening to see the conjunction because they set not long after 8 p.m.

Mike Lynch is an amateur astronomer and professional broadcast meteorologist for WCCO Radio in Minneapolis/St. Paul and is author of the book, “Stars, a Month by Month Tour of the Constellations” published by Adventure Publications and available at bookstores and at www.adventurepublications.net.