Aquila the Eagle is one of the premiere constellations of the summer, and it's one of the easiest ones to spot.

After evening twilight, Aquila is soaring in the southeastern sky, about half way from the horizon to the overhead zenith.

Start by finding Altair, Aquila's brightest star, located at the heart of the eagle. The best way to find Altair is to locate the Summer Triangle. Just look for the three brightest stars you can see in the southeastern sky that form a large triangle.

The highest and brightest star in the triangle is Vega, the brightest star in the constellation Lyra the harp. The star on the left hand side of the triangle is Deneb in the constellation Cygnus the swan. Altair is on the lower right corner and is the second brightest of the trio.

Altair is on the left side of the narrow diamond of stars that outlines Aquila's wingspan. There is also a short line of stars to the lower right of the diamond that make up the eagle's tail. Unfortunately, the eagle doesn't really have any stars that depict his head. You really have to use your imagination there.

Aquila the eagle is one bad bird. In Greek mythology, Aquila was the pet of Zeus, the king of the gods. But he was also much more. He was a messenger bird for Zeus and he carried Zeus' thunderbolts across the sky.

He also did dirty work as Zeus' diabolical "hit bird." Anytime Zeus felt it necessary to enforce or punish, he called on Aquila with his razor sharp beak. The evil eagle would punish mortals and gods alike with great dispatch and no mercy.

There's a story about how Zeus wanted to punish Prometheus, one of the old gods of the Titan family, because he gave humans the gift of fire. Zeus thought this was too great of a gift to bestow on mere mortals. Zeus was so enraged he had Prometheus chained naked to a pillar, and every single day from dawn to dusk Aquila tore through his flesh and chewed up his liver. What a warm and fuzzy story!

Since Prometheus was a god and immortal, his liver healed up every night, only to be pecked and chewed by the razor beak of Aquila the very next day. This went on day after day until the great Greek hero Hercules finally shot the evil eagle in the heart.

Astronomically, probably the most interesting part of the constellation Aquila is Altair. It's the twelfth brightest star in our sky, and is 16.8 light-years - or about 98 trillion miles - away. Believe it or not, that makes Altair a close neighbor star of our sun. Altair is almost twice as big as our 864,000-mile wide sun, and it's a hotter, more brilliant star - more than nine times brighter than our sun.

The strangest thing about Altair is that it's a star with a really big waistline. It's not a round sphere but an oval, twice as wide from side to side as it is from top to bottom. The reason Altair is an oval is because it's a rapidly rotating star. The ball of gas that makes up Altair is spinning around its axis every 6.5 hours. Now it's not unusual for stars to spin. In fact, our sun rotates on its axis every 25.5 days. However, Altair is whirling so rapidly that it's causing the gas to pile up in Altair's middle. This is due to centrifugal force, the same force you feel on a merry-go-round. The heart of Aquila the eagle is truly warped!

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

www.lynchandthestars.com