August star map.

First, let’s start with the good news. As with August stargazing any year, there’s still plenty of summer and great summer constellations in the sky. And with earlier sunsets, you can kick off your stargazing adventures much earlier in the evening.

The August marquee event, though, is an extra-special conjunction between Venus and Jupiter in the predawn Butler sky. I’ll have more on that in a bit.

The bad news this month is that the Perseids, one of the best meteor showers of the year, will be pretty much wiped out by moonlight.

I’ll have more on the fabulous Jupiter-Venus celestial hugging and the diminished Perseid meteor shower next week in Starwatch.

Even with all the special celestial treats in the morning sky this month, the evening skies in August are always special.

The brightest actual star in the August evening sky is Arcturus, shining proudly high in the west. Arcturus is also the brightest star in the constellation Bootes, the Hunting Farmer, which resembles a giant kite, with the orange-red star Arcturus at its tail.

The second brightest star in the evening heavens is Vega, the brightest star in a small, faint constellation called Lyra the Lyre, or Harp. Vega is a brilliant bluish-white star perched high in the eastern August sky. Vega and a small faint parallelogram below it are supposed to outline a celestial harp. I don’t think you’ll hear any music though.

You’ll notice two other bright stars in the eastern sky that form a triangle with Vega. This is known as the “Summer Triangle.” The star to the lower left of Vega in the eastern sky is Deneb, the brightest star in Cygnus the Swan, otherwise known as the “Northern Cross.” The star to the lower right of Vega is Altair, the brightest star in the constellation Aquila the Eagle.

The Big Dipper is hanging by its handle in the northwestern sky. The seven bright stars of the dipper outline the rear end and the tail of the constellation Big Bear, or Ursa Major. The dimmer Little Dipper, which doubles as Ursa Minor, or the Little Bear, is standing up on its handle with its only bright star Polaris, otherwise known as the North Star, at the end of the handle.

Low in the southern skies, you can see the classic summer constellations Scorpius the Scorpion and Sagittarius the Archer. Antares, a red giant star, is the brightest star in Scorpius and marks the heart of the beast.

To the left, or east, of Scorpius is a distinct pattern of stars that looks just like a teapot. That’s the brightest part of the constellation Sagittarius the Archer, a half-man, half-horse shooting an arrow. Go figure!

Look just above the teapot, and you’re gazing right in the direction of the center of our Milky Way Galaxy. If you’re star watching in the dark countryside and there’s little or no moonlight, you can see a ghostly band of light extending above the teapot’s spout, all the way across the sky toward the northeastern horizon. That’s the Milky Way band, the combined light of billions and billions of stars in the thickest part or plane of our home galaxy.

As I mentioned earlier, Saturn is now rising before midnight, returning to our evening skies. Saturn’s visible in the low eastern sky by 11 p.m. as August begins and by 9 p.m. by the end of the month. You should have no problem finding it because it’s the brightest starlike object in that area of the sky.

Viewing Saturn through a telescope has been a bit of a bummer during the last year or so because its beautiful ring system has been nearly on edge from our vantage point on Earth. This occurs every 14 years as the Earth and Saturn follow their respective orbits around the Sun. It takes nearly 29 years for Saturn to make a complete orbit around the sun.

The good news is that the angle of the very thin ring system is beginning to open up a bit, giving us a slightly better view of it. This trend will continue over the next several years. Even without a good view of the ring system, only about 50 feet thick on average, made mainly of ice, you can still easily see many of Saturn’s moons, especially Titan, its largest satellite.

Enjoy awesome August stargazing!

Mike Lynch is an amateur astronomer and professional broadcast meteorologist for WCCO Radio in Minneapolis/St. Paul. He is also the author of “Stars: a Month by Month Tour of the Constellations,” published by Adventure Publications and available at bookstores and at adventurepublications.net. Contact him at mikewlynch@comcast.net.