The 'Stinger Stars' in the tail of Scorpius

One would not normally think of a diving board in reference to celestial matters; however, for grins and giggles, we are going to do so.

The "Stinger stars" at the end of the tail of Scorpius could provide a nice diving board into other celestial objects. For instance, Shaula and the Lasath are the "Stinger stars" in the Scorpius tail. They look like a nice pair of double stars, but nothing could be further from the truth.

We could use them as the diving board into other celestial wonders. Let's take a spring off the board and see where we go.

The first place we go is the familiar territory of M6 and M7, the lovely open star clusters just above the stinger pair.

We have discussed them before and they are easily seen in binoculars, in fact, they are easily seen with just the eyes alone and are worthy of going back to for examination.

Continuing upward in our dive we are going to find more star clusters and nebula, most notably the beautiful Trifid Nebula (M20).

This nebula is a cluster of gas and stars very near the center of the Milky Way Galaxy. Close by is the equally fabulous the Lagoon Nebula (M8).

This pair also is fabulous in binoculars being visible in the same Field Of View. These two are found in the constellation Sagittarius, "The Teapot" shape, found in the Southern Milky Way Galaxy. Sagittarius is normally known as "The Archer," (The Archer refers to the famous Centaur of Mythology), but modern astronomers have long referred the teapot asterism.

Since we are in space, we are not bound by the confines of gravity, which means we can keep going up, and up, and up in our dive. As such we can continue on beyond M8 and M20 to the wonderful realms of more star clusters.

Such as the spectacular M6 Eagle Nebula, which contains the fabulous so-called "Pillars of Creation" so named from one of the first photographs of the Hubble Space Telescope.

Also here you can find by sweeping your binoculars such beauties at M21, M23, and M26. I won't tell you where they are, I will let you find them for yourselves. In other places in the sky the summer constellations are slowly moving westward as the autumn--and in some cases even winter--constellations are starting to appear.

The Summer Triangle is now very high overhead in the late evenings, the other Summer Constellations of Scorpius are getting ready to exit stage right and Sagittarius is getting ready for its place in stage center (in the South).

In the late evening, The Great Square of Pegasus is sticking its nose over the horizon and if you are up really, really early you might even catch Orion, The Hunter.

SKY WATCH: New moon Thursday, Sept. 1, remember new moon means no moon. If you have not seen the Mars, Antares, Saturn get-together, you still have time as they are still together in the southern sky slightly left of the head of Scorpius. They don't make a nice triangle anymore but are still worth the look-see.

NEXT WEEK: More astronomical blathering.