The Summer Triangle

The Summer Triangle 

- Jim McKeegan

Long ago, favorite stories often were told around an evening campfire. Pointing at the night sky, a storyteller might invite listeners to see parts of the story among the stars. Groups of bright stars were imagined to be pictures of famous heroes. Sometimes the star patterns became animals and monsters, sometimes tools, or even a musical instrument.

Today we call these star-pictures constellations. Many of the stories that we tell about the constellations come from the Greeks and Romans. These stories are at least two thousand years old, and many are even older.

Summer is a great time to spend an evening under the stars. See if you can find these constellations in the summer sky, then share their stories with your family and friends.

Three Bright Stars