It's hard to believe but summer is racing to a close. Children are going back to school and even though summer doesn't officially end until Sept. 22, it's just not the same once we get past Labor Day.

There's still plenty of summer in the Butler evening sky as far as the constellations go.

One of my favorite constellations is Hercules the Hero. It's certainly not one of brightest constellations, but I love the celestial hero's classic story. Hercules is supposed to outline the figure of a mighty hero in Greek mythology but to me looks more like a giant fancy handwritten capital “H” (for Hercules) hanging diagonally in the high southwestern sky.

As soon as it's dark enough, after 8:30 p.m., start to look for a very bright star nearly overhead. That's the bright star Vega in the constellation Lyra the Lyre. About 15 to 20 degrees to the lower right of Vega in the high southwestern sky (or about two of your fist-widths at arm's length) look for four moderately bright stars that form a trapezoid.

You should be able to see it unless there's a lot of light pollution visible from where you're observing. That trapezoid is in the center of Hercules, right about where you'd join the two sides of the “H” shape.

The most significant part of Hercules is on the upper right hand side of the trapezoid.

That's where you'll find one of the great celestial treasures of the sky anytime of the year. It's a must-see object with any size telescope, the amazing great Hercules cluster.

You even can see it with the naked eye if you're stargazing in the dark countryside. Look for a faint smudge, but with a good pair of binoculars or even better, a telescope, you'll see a really gorgeous spherical cluster of very old 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 away. There might be up to a million stars crammed in 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 used to the darkness of the field.

At my stargazing programs this time of year it's one of the best treasures I love showing off to the folks through my larger scopes. The Hercules cluster is one of many globular clusters that form a halo around our Milky Way galaxy.

Astronomers don't know exactly how they form, but globular clusters are definitely part of our galaxy's evolution.

In Greek Mythology, Hercules was a mighty muscle man. For most of his life he also had a huge heart, except for a briefly awful insane episode.

As a teenager, he fell in love with the beautiful, but conniving Princess Megara. They foolishly were married soon after they met and the honeymoon didn't last very long.

Arguments quickly broke out. Hercules felt that there was nothing he could do to please Megara. She picked and picked at Hercules until he blew his stack and temporally lost his sanity. With his mighty hand he choked Princess Megara and all her attendants.

Immediately after the massacre, Hercules instantly came to his senses and realized the extent of horrible deeds. He was beyond sick with guilt and shame and turned himself in, leaving his fate up to Eurystheus, the King of Mycenae and Megara's father.

The wise and extremely compassionate king was totally devastated with the loss of his daughter, Megara, but accepted that his son-in-law was truly sorry for his crime and temporary loss of his sanity.

Nonetheless, Hercules had to be punished so Eurystheus assigned Hercules to 12 incredibly difficult labors that he had to perform to atone for his crime. He would have been a lot happier breaking big rocks into little rocks.

One of his labors was to slay Leo the Lion, the king of kings of all beasts. Using all his strength and brains he slayed the monster lion and went on to complete all his other labors, such as taking on a nine-headed snake and stealing cattle from a monster.

Zeus, the king of the gods and all his buddies on Mount Olympus rewarded Hercules at the time of his death for all his great work by placing his body in the heaven as the constellation we see through the summer and early fall.

They didn't want Hercules to receive full honors, though, because of his murder conviction, so they hung his body upside down in the heavens.

Celestial hugging

Early this week check the very close conjunction during evening twilight between Jupiter and Venus in the very low western sky just above the horizon.

Mike Lynch is an amateur astronomer and professional broadcast meteorologist for WCCO Radio in Minneapolis. He is author of “Stars: A Month by Month Tour of the Constellations” published by Adventure Publications. It is available at bookstores and at www.adventurepublications.net.