As soon as it's dark, around 9 p.m., look for a constellation in the low southern skies that clearly resembles a teapot. A triangle of three bright stars makes up the spout on the right side, and a trapezoid of four stars on the left side makes up the handle. In between and above the handle and the pot is a single star that marks the top of the teapot.

That celestial teapot is the main part of the classic constellation Sagittarius the Archer. According to Greek and Roman lore, the teapot we see is supposed to depict a half-man, half-horse flinging an arrow to the west toward the next-door constellation, Scorpius, the Scorpion. Unlike Sagittarius, though, Scorpius actually looks like a Scorpion. With a little imagination, you can see what looks like a figure shooting an arrow at Scorpius.

Without a doubt, though, it's much easier to see Sagittarius as a teapot. If you're fortunate enough to be stargazing in the dark, you'll easily see a band of light arching overhead, stretching all the way from the northern to the southern horizon. This is the famous Milky Way Band, the thickest part of our galaxy. You can't help but notice that the Milky Way band runs right into Sagittarius. In fact, the center of our Milky Way Galaxy is right in the direction of the little teapot. 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. It's a very busy part of the sky, and even with a small telescope or even a pair of binoculars you'll find many, many star clusters and nebulae.

In fact, if you look above the spout of the teapot, it almost looks like a puff of steam. That puff is known astronomically as Messier Object 8, the Lagoon Nebula. It's a bright emission nebula that's one of the larger and brighter star factories we can see in our night skies, and you don't need all that fancy of a telescope to get a good look at it. This giant cloud of hydrogen gas, the raw material used to make a star, is over 5,000 light-years away and roughly 100 light-years in diameter. Just one light-year equals close to six trillion miles. Stars form when denser pockets of hydrogen gas gravitationally collapse, causing the cores of these condensed balls to heat to millions and millions of degrees. When the core of these gas balls reaches a high enough temperature, nuclear fusion begins, and you have a new star in the heavens. Within the Lagoon Nebula, you can see many new young single stars and clusters of stars, and there's a lot more on the way. These young stars are very hot and massive producers of ultraviolet radiation, and all this energy energizes the surrounding hydrogen gas, causing it to glow like neon light. If your view is clear enough and your telescope strong enough, you may see strands of dark clouds across parts of the nebula. These clouds of hydrogen gas don't have bright new stars around them, so they appear to us in their raw, dark form.

Enjoy the Lagoon Nebula above the spout of the teapot and all the celestial treasures around Sagittarius. It's definitely one of my favorite parts of the night sky.