I hope at least one time this summer you can get away from the urban and suburban lit up skies and really take in the splendor of the nighttime skies.

Also, don’t forget that reclining lawn chair so you can stargaze in complete comfort. Insect repellant can also greatly add to your comfort.

Even if you’re stargazing into not so dark skies it’s still a nice time. After about 15 to 20 minutes your night vision will kick in and you’ll start to see fainter stars, at least in the upper half of the sky.

Along with the great summer constellations of the Butler sky you can take in with just your eyes, there are also great celestial treasures you can dig for with even a small telescope or even binoculars.

One of the best ones is hanging high in the southern sky near the overhead zenith in the faint constellation Hercules the Hero. It’s the great Hercules Globular cluster, an ancient spherical swarm of possibly a million stars about 25,000 light years away with just one light-year weighing in at nearly six trillion miles.

All of these stars are packed in a sphere less than 150 light years across. It’s crowded in there. The Great Hercules cluster is also known to astronomers as Messier Object 13 or M13.

I think the easiest way to find it is to use the two brightest stars you can see in the evening sky right now, Vega and Arcturus. They also happen to be nearly overhead.

Vega is just to the east of the zenith in the faint constellation Lyra the Harp, and Arcturus is just to the west in the constellation Bootes the Farmer, featured in last week’s Starwatch column.

Draw a line between Vega and Arcturus. M13 will be just short of the halfway point from Vega to Arcturus. Scan that area with your binoculars or telescope with a low magnification and wide field width and see if you can find what looks like a tiny little “fuzzy” star.

Once you spot M13 with a telescope, switch to a higher magnification eyepiece and hopefully see its true nature. You should be able to see some of the individual stars at the outer perimeter.

Globular clusters like M13 are made up of old stars generally more than 12 billion years old, and more than 140 globular clusters form a giant halo around our Milky Way galaxy. In a way they are part of the outer structure of our home galaxy, or what some astronomers call satellites of our Milky Way.

I can just about guarantee you’ll fall in love with one of the true jewels of the heavens, especially if you’re taking it in from the dark countryside.

For extra credit, see if you can find another globular cluster not all that far way from M13 in the constellation Hercules — M92.

Take your binoculars or telescope and scan the area about eight degrees, or just less than the width of your fist held at arm’s length, to the upper left of M13 and you should be able to spot M92. It’s just about as bright as M13 and a little farther away at a distance of 27,000 light years.

While you’re gazing into the summer sky, I want you to see if you can spot a star called T-Coronae Borealis in the faint constellation by the same name.

Just like M13, you can use the bright stars Arcturus and Vega to find it. About two-thirds of the way from Vega to Arcturus there will be a fairly faint collection of stars that form a backward “C.” That’s the constellation Corona Borealis the Northern Cross. With slightly intensified imagination, you can see how the backward “C” could be seen as a crown.

One of stars in the crown is much brighter than the others. It’s Alphecca, a star around 75 light years away.

T-Coronae Borealis is located on the lower side of the crown. The only thing is I can just about guarantee you won’t see it.

So why am I bringing up? Because there is a tiny chance you may see it, about the same chance you have of winning a multimillion dollar lottery.

T-Coronae Borealis is also known as the “Blaze Star,” but it sure doesn’t blaze that often. In fact, in the last 150 years it’s only blazed up for a few days back in 1866 and again in 1946.

So what’s going on? T-Coronae Borealis is actually a double star system made up of a large red giant star and a dying white dwarf star. As the two orbit each other the strong gravity of the white dwarf pulls gas off the red giant star.

The details are complicated, but white dwarf stars can only acquire so much additional gas before they become extremely unstable and blow away the acquired mass in all directions. When this happens to T-Coronae Borealis it temporally becomes the brightest star in Corona Borealis. Astronomers call this phenomena a recurrent nova.

No one knows exactly when the star will blaze away again. It might just happen during your time under the summer heavens.

Celestial hugging

On Sunday night, the new crescent moon will be just to the left of the bright planets Venus and Jupiter in the very low early evening western sky.

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.