Look up

As usual, we’ll observe the night sky in the west. Now that daylight saving time has ended, the sun is beginning to set just before 5 p.m. so we’ll start observing a little earlier at around 7 p.m. As it turns out, we’re still able to see constellation of Aquila in the west but it’s slightly shifted to the right or to the north.

Let’s take another look at the stars of Aquila. It contains eight named stars but I could only see seven of them, although one is very faint. Again, to spot Aquila look for two stars that are pretty close together in the west but more toward the north or the right. One is brighter than the other. The brighter star is the brightest star in the constellation and the 12th brightest in the sky is called Altair. Its name comes from an Arabic phrase “an-nasr at-ta’ir,” which means the flying eagle. It’s also known as Alpha Aquilae. It is a main sequence multi-star system that has three companions. It’s also one of the closest stars to our planet at just 16.8 light years away. The star to the right or north of it is Tarazed or Tarazet and is the second brightest star in Aquila. (Previously I shared it was to the left but that was incorrect.) Its name comes from a Persian phrase “sahin tarazu,” which is “the beam of the scale.” It’s also called Gamma Aquilae. It’s a bright giant that is about 461 light years away. Tarazed is 2,960 times brighter than the sun and is a known source of X-rays. These stars are in the middle of the constellation.

The third brightest star in the constellation is to the north or right of Tarazed, but lower, a little closer to the horizon is called Deneb el Okab Zeta Aquilae. It’s a triple star system that is just a bit over 83 light years away with a white A-type main sequence dwarf as the primary.

Then the star that’s just to the right or north of it has a very similar name but is called Deneb el Okab Epsilon Aquilae. Its name is derived from the Arabic phrase “oanab al-cuqab,” which means the tail of the eagle. That’s where things get a bit more confusing because some older constellations pictures will show this star as the tail but on my app, this star is where the left wing is when the eagle is facing. Sometimes it’s listed as the third brightest star in the constellation.

Once again, we’ll continue with the rest of Aquila’s stars next week.

It will be rotated to the right from where we’re observing it.