Studio / Sky

Notes from the sky

The footer of this site follows the evening sky through the year. These are its four skies, each seen three ways: the stories people told about them, what the stars are, and how to find them yourself.

The seasons are the Northern Hemisphere’s, read as the evening sky, which is how the footer keeps them. What you can see depends on your latitude, the time of night, your horizon and how dark your sky is. From India the same patterns stand at different heights than they do from Europe or North America, and from the Southern Hemisphere they appear upside down, some in the opposite season. Each note says what changes. These notes describe; they do not track the sky in real time.

01

Orion

The HunterWinterConstellation

The figure most people find first. On a winter evening three stars in a short, straight row stand in the south, with a red star above them and a blue-white one below.

The ancient sky

In Homer’s Odyssey, Orion is a hunter still at work in the underworld, carrying a bronze club. Hesiod’s Works and Days uses him to time the farmer’s year: thresh when he first appears, gather the grapes when he stands high with Sirius, plough when he begins to set.

How he died depends on who tells it. In the Odyssey, Calypso says Artemis shot him, because the gods resented Dawn’s love for him. In Aratus’s poem the Phaenomena, written about 275 BC, Artemis sends a scorpion; in a lost poem attributed to Hesiod, and later in Hyginus and Ovid, it is Earth who sends it, after Orion boasts that he will kill every beast alive. Aratus adds why the two never share the sky: as the Scorpion rises in the east, Orion sets in the west.

Aratus already names the belt and the sword, and he uses the Belt to mark the sky’s equator. It still does: Mintaka, its western star, sits almost on that line, so it rises close to due east and sets close to due west.

What science sees

The pattern depends on where we stand. Bellatrix, the western shoulder, is about 250 light years away. The three Belt stars, long said to lie at very different distances, are now measured at roughly 1,000 to 1,300 light years, members of the same family of young stars.

Betelgeuse, the red shoulder, is a red supergiant roughly 550 to 725 light years away; its distance is still debated. In 2019 and 2020 it lost more than two-thirds of its brightness, which Hubble and the Very Large Telescope traced to material thrown off its surface that cooled into dust. Rigel, the blue-white foot, is a supergiant about 860 light years away.

The Sword’s middle star is not a single star. It is the Orion Nebula, M42, a cloud about 1,300 light years away in which stars are forming now, lit by the young Trapezium stars at its heart.

Find it yourself

Orion, with Sirius along the line of the Belt. Drawn from catalogue positions as the sky looks facing south: north up, east on the left. Larger dots are brighter stars; the dashed arrows are the hops in the steps.
  1. Look south on a winter evening, around 9 pm in late January, for three stars of similar brightness in a short, nearly straight row. That is the Belt.
  2. Above the Belt is red-orange Betelgeuse; below it, blue-white Rigel. The difference in colour shows without binoculars.
  3. Below the Belt hangs the Sword. Its middle star looks slightly blurred, because it is the Orion Nebula, M42. Binoculars show a glow; a small telescope shows the four Trapezium stars at its heart.
  4. Follow the Belt down and to the left, about two fists at arm’s length, to Sirius, the brightest star of the night. The other way, the line leads roughly to orange Aldebaran.

Elsewhere on Earth

From India, Orion climbs higher in the south in the same months. From the Southern Hemisphere it is a summer pattern, high in the north and upside down; in Australia and New Zealand the Belt and Sword are often called the Saucepan.

Sources and further reading
  1. Homer, Odyssey 5 (tr. A. T. Murray): Calypso’s account of Artemis killing Orion, because the gods begrudged Dawn’s love
  2. Homer, Odyssey 11 (tr. A. T. Murray): Orion hunting in the underworld with a bronze club
  3. Hesiod, Works and Days 585–620 (tr. H. G. Evelyn-White): Orion as a calendar for threshing, the vintage and ploughing
  4. Aratus, Phaenomena (tr. G. R. Mair): Artemis and the Scorpion; Orion setting as the Scorpion rises; the Belt on the equator
  5. Hesiod, Astronomy fragment, preserved in the Catasterismi (tr. H. G. Evelyn-White): Orion’s boast and the scorpion sent by Earth
  6. Hyginus, De Astronomia 2.26, quoted on Theoi (tr. M. Grant): Earth sends the scorpion; Ovid’s version of the boast
  7. NASA, Hubble finds Betelgeuse’s dimming was an outburst: the Great Dimming of 2019 and 2020 and its cause; a distance of about 725 light years
  8. ESO, the dusty veil behind Betelgeuse’s dimming (2021): the Very Large Telescope’s view of the dimming
  9. Joyce et al. (2020), the distance to Betelgeuse: about 548 light years, the near end of ‘roughly 550 to 725’
  10. Oplištilová et al. (2023), Astronomy & Astrophysics 672, A31: Mintaka at about 1,240 light years, in the Orion OB1b association
  11. Sky & Telescope, Meet Bellatrix: Bellatrix at about 250 light years
  12. EarthSky, Rigel is Orion’s brightest star: Rigel as a blue supergiant at Orion’s foot, about 860 light years away
  13. Kounkel et al. (2017), the distance to the Orion Nebula Cluster: M42 at about 1,270 light years (Menten et al. 2007 give about 1,350)
  14. NASA, Messier 42: star formation in M42, the Trapezium, and that it is visible to the naked eye
  15. EarthSky, Orion the Hunter is easy to spot: when to look, and the blurred Sword star
  16. ABC Science, Orion the Saucepan: Orion upside down from the Southern Hemisphere, where it looks like a saucepan

Checked 3 November 2026.

02

Leo

The LionSpringConstellation

Spring evenings belong to a crouching lion, high in the south. A backward question mark makes the head and mane, and a triangle the haunches.

The ancient sky

A lion stood in this part of the sky before the Greeks drew one. Babylonian star lists, compiled before the 8th century BC, name a constellation here, UR.GU.LA, usually read as ‘lion’, and the Greeks took over the zodiac’s animal figures around 500 BC.

Aratus calls it simply the Lion and tells no story. The Roman mythographer Hyginus says it was set among the stars as the king of beasts, and adds that ‘some writers’ make it the lion of Nemea, the first labour of Heracles: a beast whose hide no weapon could pierce, which Heracles strangled and then wore. The Nemean Lion is one Greek reading of Leo, not the only one.

The Sickle, as an English name for the head and mane, was in use by 1899.

What science sees

Regulus, the dot of the question mark, is about 79 light years away. It spins once in about 16 hours, so close to tearing itself apart that its equator bulges a third wider than its poles; the CHARA telescope array on Mount Wilson reported the bulge in 2005. It is not one star but at least four, one of them a faint companion that circles it every 40 days. Regulus also sits almost exactly on the Sun’s path, so the Moon sometimes passes in front of it.

The drawing joins stars at very different depths. Denebola, the tail, is about 36 light years away; Eta Leonis, in the Sickle just above Regulus, about 1,270. Far beyond them all, below the Lion’s hind leg, three galaxies, the Leo Triplet, lie about 35 million light years off. A telescope shows them as hazy ovals.

Find it yourself

Leo, with the Big Dipper's bowl above it in the northern sky. Drawn from catalogue positions as the sky looks facing south: north up, east on the left. Larger dots are brighter stars; the dashed arrows are the hops in the steps.
  1. On an April evening, find the Big Dipper high in the north-east.
  2. Take the two stars of its bowl nearest the handle, Megrez and Phecda. Run a line from Megrez through Phecda and carry it on about four and a half fists at arm’s length. It passes the Lion’s mane and ends near Regulus. (The better-known pointers, Dubhe and Merak, used the other way round, land on the Lion’s back, just west of the haunches.)
  3. Look for a backward question mark of six stars, the Sickle. Regulus, the brightest star in Leo, is its dot.
  4. East of the Sickle, Denebola, Zosma and Chertan make a triangle for the haunches and the tail.

Elsewhere on Earth

From southern India, Regulus passes almost straight overhead. From the Southern Hemisphere, Leo is an autumn pattern, lower in the north and upside down.

Sources and further reading
  1. Aratus, Phaenomena (tr. G. R. Mair): the Lion beneath the Bear’s hind feet, with no story attached
  2. Theoi, the Nemean Lion (Hyginus 2.24, tr. M. Grant; Apollodorus; Diodorus): the king of beasts, the link to Heracles that ‘some writers add’, the hide no weapon could pierce
  3. All Skies Encyclopaedia, UR.GU.LA: the Babylonian constellation usually identified with Leo, read as ‘lion’
  4. Hunger and Steele, The Babylonian Astronomical Compendium MUL.APIN: the star lists compiled before the 8th century BC
  5. Rogers (1998), Origins of the ancient constellations II: the Greeks taking over the zodiac’s figures around 500 BC
  6. R. H. Allen, Star Names (1899): the Sickle as a name in English use by 1899
  7. McAlister et al. (2005), the rotation of Regulus measured with CHARA: the CHARA measurement of Regulus’s rapid rotation and gravity darkening
  8. Georgia State University, Regulus spins near breakup (2005): an equator a third wider than the poles
  9. Sky & Telescope, Meet Regulus: a rotation of about 16 hours, its companions, and the bowl stars on the handle side that point to it
  10. Gies et al. (2020), the companion of Regulus: the faint companion in a 40-day orbit
  11. EarthSky, the Sickle of Leo: the six stars of the Sickle, and Eta Leonis at about 1,270 light years
  12. Sky & Telescope, Meet Denebola: Denebola at about 36 light years
  13. NASA, Messier 66: the Leo Triplet at about 35 million light years
  14. ESO, the Leo Triplet: the three galaxies as hazy ovals in a moderate telescope
  15. EarthSky, Leo, here’s your constellation: when to look, and the Dubhe and Merak pointers turned toward Leo

Checked 3 November 2026.

03

The Summer Triangle

Three bright starsSummerAsterism

Not a constellation but three bright stars from three of them, joined into a triangle so large it takes a moment to see it as one shape.

The ancient sky

No ancient source we know of draws this triangle. The Austrian astronomer Johann von Littrow described it in 1839 without a name; Oswald Thomas called it the Great Triangle in the late 1920s and a summer triangle by 1934, and Patrick Moore made the English name familiar from the 1950s.

Its three stars belong to older figures. Vega is the brightest star of the Lyre, which Aratus says the infant Hermes made from a tortoise shell and set in the sky himself; in Hyginus, the Muses place it there after the death of Orpheus. Deneb lies in the Swan, Aratus’s plain ‘Bird’, which Hyginus explains as Zeus in a swan’s form. Altair is in the Eagle, in Hyginus the bird that carried Ganymede to Zeus.

Other skies told other stories. In a Chinese legend, also celebrated in Japan as Tanabata, Vega is the Weaver and Altair the Cowherd, kept apart by the Milky Way.

What science sees

The triangle is flat only from here. Altair is about 17 light years away and Vega about 25. Deneb, a supergiant, is somewhere between about 1,500 and 2,600, roughly 90 to 150 times farther than Altair and among the most distant stars the eye can see.

Two of the three spin unusually fast. Vega turns in about 16 hours, and we see it almost pole-on. Altair turns in about 9 to 10 hours, so fast that its equator bulges about a fifth wider than its poles; in 2007 the CHARA array made the first image of its surface.

Vega was long the reference star for the magnitude scale. And because Earth’s axis slowly wobbles, it was the pole star around 12,000 BC and will be again around AD 13,700.

Find it yourself

The Summer Triangle: Vega, Deneb and Altair, with Altair's two neighbours. Drawn from catalogue positions as the sky looks facing south: north up, east on the left. Larger dots are brighter stars; the dashed arrows are the hops in the steps.
  1. On a summer evening, look high in the east in June and July, or overhead in August and September, for blue-white Vega, the brightest of the three.
  2. About two fists to Vega’s lower left, as the Triangle rises in the east, find Deneb.
  3. About three and a half fists to Vega’s lower right is Altair.
  4. Confirm Altair by its two neighbours in a short line, Tarazed on one side and fainter Alshain on the other.

Elsewhere on Earth

From India all three stand high, though the monsoon can hide them, from June to September across most of the country and from October to December on the south-east coast; the Triangle stays in the western evening sky into November. From the Southern Hemisphere it is a winter pattern, low in the north and upside down, and Deneb never rises south of about 45°S.

Sources and further reading
  1. Sky & Telescope, The Summer Triangle makes its midnight debut (2017): Littrow in 1839, Oswald Thomas’s names of the 1920s and 1934, Patrick Moore from the 1950s, and the fist distances
  2. Aratus, Phaenomena (tr. G. R. Mair): Hermes’s Lyre, the Bird and the Eagle, each a separate figure
  3. Hyginus, De Astronomia 2.7, 2.8 and 2.16 (tr. M. Grant): the Muses placing the Lyre after Orpheus’s death; Zeus as a swan; the eagle that carried Ganymede
  4. NASA Night Sky Network, the Tanabata festival: the lovers of Tanabata separated by the Milky Way
  5. EarthSky, the Summer Triangle: an asterism of Vega, Deneb and Altair
  6. EarthSky, Vega: Vega at about 25 light years
  7. NOIRLab, Vega spins near breakup (2006): Vega seen nearly pole-on
  8. Böhm et al. (2015), Discovery of starspots on Vega: a rotation period of 0.68 days, about 16 hours
  9. Sky & Telescope, Vega, the star at the center of everything: Vega as the magnitude reference, and as pole star around 12,000 BC and AD 13,700
  10. EarthSky, Altair: Altair at about 17 light years, spinning in about 10 hours, and as the Cowherd in the Chinese legend
  11. NASA Night Sky Network, Altair: Altair spinning about 2.8 times a day
  12. Monnier et al. (2007), Imaging the surface of Altair: the first image of Altair’s surface, and its flattened shape
  13. EarthSky, Deneb, among the farthest stars to be seen: Deneb as a supergiant among the most distant naked-eye stars
  14. EarthSky, Deneb and the distances to stars (2026): Deneb’s uncertain distance, from about 1,500 (a Hipparcos reanalysis) to 2,600 light years
  15. EarthSky, the Summer Triangle in autumn and winter: the Triangle in the west on November evenings

Checked 3 November 2026.

04

The Great Square of Pegasus

The Winged HorseAutumnAsterism

Autumn’s landmark is a large, nearly empty square of four modest stars, high in the south. It marks the body of the winged horse.

The ancient sky

In Hesiod’s Theogony, Pegasus springs from Medusa when Perseus beheads her. Pindar has Athena give the hero Bellerophon a golden bridle to tame him; mounted on Pegasus, Bellerophon kills the Chimaera, and later falls when he tries to ride up to heaven. Homer’s older account of the Chimaera has no winged horse at all. Perseus riding Pegasus to rescue Andromeda is a later image, found in paintings; in the Greek and Roman sources he flies on winged sandals.

In the sky, Aratus describes only ‘the Horse’, and only its front half, cut off at the navel. He picks out four bright, evenly spaced stars on its body, one of them shared with Andromeda’s head. Hyginus says Aratus and many others call it Pegasus, though Aratus never uses the name, and some saw the mare Melanippe instead. Aratus’s Greek says only that the stars are evenly spaced; the name Great Square is modern.

What science sees

The fourth corner, Alpheratz, is Andromeda’s. It was long counted in both figures, and also called Delta Pegasi, until the boundaries the International Astronomical Union approved in 1928 placed it in Andromeda alone.

The corners share only a direction. Alpheratz is about 97 light years away, Markab about 140, Scheat about 200 and Algenib about 390. Scheat is a red giant whose brightness drifts slightly.

The Square is also a signpost. From Alpheratz, Andromeda’s stars lead to the Andromeda Galaxy, M31, about 2.5 million light years away. From a dark site its trillion stars reach the eye as a faint patch of haze, larger than the full Moon.

Find it yourself

The Great Square, and the hop through Andromeda to its galaxy. Drawn from catalogue positions as the sky looks facing south: north up, east on the left. Larger dots are brighter stars; the dashed arrows are the hops in the steps.
  1. On an autumn evening, from late October into November, look high in the south for four stars marking a square about 15 degrees on a side, a fist and a half at arm’s length. Its corners are only second and third magnitude, so it is bigger and fainter than most people expect, and its middle looks empty.
  2. Go to the north-east corner, Alpheratz, and follow Andromeda’s line of stars east, about a fist and a half, to Mirach.
  3. At Mirach, turn north-west through the fainter star Mu Andromedae.
  4. Carry on the same distance again to the Andromeda Galaxy, a faint, elongated glow. A dark sky matters more than anything else; binoculars show its bright core.

Elsewhere on Earth

From India the Square passes almost overhead, so a reclining chair helps. From the Southern Hemisphere it is a spring pattern, low in the north and upside down, and the Andromeda Galaxy sits low.

Sources and further reading
  1. Hesiod, Theogony 270–350 (tr. H. G. Evelyn-White): Pegasus born from Medusa; Pegasus and Bellerophon against the Chimaera
  2. Pindar, Olympian 13 (tr. D. A. Svarlien): Athena’s golden bridle
  3. Pindar, Isthmian 7 (tr. D. A. Svarlien): Pegasus throwing Bellerophon on the way to heaven
  4. Homer, Iliad 6 (tr. A. T. Murray): Bellerophon and the Chimaera with no Pegasus
  5. Apollodorus, Library 2.4 (tr. J. G. Frazer): Perseus flying on winged sandals
  6. The Frick Collection, Tiepolo’s Perseus and Andromeda: Perseus on Pegasus as a painter’s liberty with Ovid
  7. Aratus, Phaenomena (tr. G. R. Mair): the half-horse, its evenly spaced stars (‘a square’ is the translator’s word), and the star shared with Andromeda’s head
  8. Hyginus, De Astronomia 2.18 (tr. M. Grant): Aratus and many others calling it Pegasus, or the mare Melanippe
  9. EarthSky, Alpheratz: Alpheratz, formerly also Delta Pegasi, assigned to Andromeda; about 97 light years
  10. IAU, Constellations: the 88 constellations and Delporte’s boundaries, approved in 1928
  11. EarthSky, Pegasus the Winged Horse: the corners’ distances
  12. Sky & Telescope, Meet Scheat: Scheat as a red giant whose brightness varies
  13. Astronomy Now, the Great Square of Pegasus (2023): about 15 degrees on a side; second- and third-magnitude corners; larger than beginners expect
  14. NASA, Messier 31: about 2.5 million light years; visible to the unaided eye from a dark site
  15. NASA Night Sky Network, Catch Andromeda rising: a patch of haze to the eye; binoculars show the core
  16. EarthSky, Star-hop to the Andromeda Galaxy: Alpheratz to Mirach, then through Mu Andromedae twice the distance

Checked 3 November 2026.