This week and next in my column, I want to take you to the low southern skies for two of the best constellations of summer, Sagittarius and Scorpius. These are two of my favorite constellations.

This week I want to feature Sagittarius the Archer, which is located near the direction of the center of our Milky Way Galaxy, home of our sun and maybe up to a half trillion other stars!

Unless you're blind or you haven't bothered to check out the starry summer skies — shame on you if that's the case — you've seen Jupiter in the low southeastern sky in the early evening. It's by far the brightest starlike object in the night sky this summer.

With even a small telescope, you'll see up to four of its moons that look like little stars on either side of Jupiter.

You may even see cloud bands across the biggest planet in our solar system, more than 88,000 miles in diameter. By comparison, our Earth is a paltry 7,900 miles in girth.

Anyway, you can use Jupiter this year to locate Sagittarius the Archer. Look just to the right and just a little below Jupiter for a pattern of seven bright stars that clearly draw out the pattern of a teapot.

There are four stars on the left hand side that make up the handle, three stars on the right that make up the spout, and one in between that marks the top of the teapot's lid.

But wait, didn't I say that Sagittarius was supposed to be an archer?

Actually, according to Greek and Roman mythology, it's supposed to be a centaur shooting an arrow. According to legend, centaurs were half man and half horse and had a nasty reputation. They were deceptive, despicable characters who drank too much and got into a lot of fights. They had no tolerance for anyone who wasn't their kind.

According to the legend, though, there was one well behaved centaur named Chiron who was well educated and had some manners. He stayed out of the bars and preferred hunting for quail on his farm.

Unfortunately, he was accidentally killed by the great hero Hercules, whose constellation was featured last month in this column.

Hercules was taking on a battalion of rioting centaurs who were attacking him. Hercules fought them all to the death and was riding off when he spotted Chiron in the distance. In the heat of battle he figured Chiron was just another hostile Centaur and hurled a spear at the gentle half human-half horsey, doing him in.

The gods of Mount Olympus felt sorry for Chiron and placed his body in the sky in the form of the constellation we see in southern skies of summer.

The only problem is that the constellation looks much more like a teapot and that's really what most stargazers see it as.

If you really want to make it into a half man-half horse, the best I can do for you is to suggest that the handle of the teapot is the elbow of Chiron pulled back to fire an arrow. The spout of the teapot is his bow and the star at the right point of the spout is the tip of the arrow.

This time of year is so great to get out to the countryside and stargaze away from city lights. It's in the dark summer skies that you can clearly see the bright band of milky light stretching from the northern horizon to the southern horizon. You're looking sideways into the disk of stars that make up most of the stars in our galaxy.

There are so many stars in the band and they're so far away that you see their combined light all mashed together.

The constellation Sagittarius, on the southern end of the Milky Way band, is in the direction of the center of our galaxy, about 26,000 light years away. By the way, just one light year is almost six trillion miles!

The downtown section of our home galaxy would appear a lot brighter in our sky, but there's a lot of obscuring interstellar gas and dust in the way. Many astronomers believe that if it weren't for all that gas and dust the part of the sky around Sagittarius would be brighter than the full moon!

Nonetheless, that part of the Milky Way band around the teapot is fairly bright anyway and loaded with a lot of fun stuff. Even with a small telescope or even a pair of binoculars you'll find many, many star clusters and nebulae.

In fact, with just the naked eye, if it's dark enough where you're stargazing, you'll see what looks like a puff of celestial steam above the spout of the teapot. That "puff" is known astronomically as M8, the Lagoon Nebula, a bright emission nebula. It's one of the larger and brighter star factories we can see in the sky and you don't need all that a fancy of a telescope to get a really good look at it. This giant cloud of hydrogen, the raw material it takes to manufacture stars, is around 5,000 light-years away and roughly 100 light-years in diameter. Within this cloud many new stars are being born, some with solar systems and planets that could end up being like Earth.

Enjoy the Lagoon Nebula and all the celestial treasures around Sagittarius. It's definitely one of my favorite parts of the night sky. I love the teapot of summer! Next week I'll take you on a tour of Sagittarius' next door neighbor, Scorpius the Scorpion.

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