On summer evenings, if you look south from a dark place, you can see a cloud of stars that looks like steam rising from a teapot. That asterism, the Teapot, is the main part of Sagittarius, and the glow rising from its spout is the Milky Way, thick with stars.
Centaur or satyr?
Sagittarius is usually pictured as a centaur drawing a bow, aimed at the Scorpion's heart. The Greeks sometimes said he was Chiron, the wise centaur who taught Achilles and Asclepius, though Chiron is usually identified with the constellation Centaurus. Another tradition says he was Crotus, a satyr who lived with the Muses and invented archery. The Babylonians pictured a similar archer-centaur, a creature with wings and a scorpion tail, as early as 1000 BCE.
Looking at the center of the Milky Way
The Sagittarius direction is special for a reason the ancients could not know. The center of our galaxy lies in that direction, about 26,000 light years away, hidden behind clouds of dust. A radio source there, Sagittarius A*, is a black hole four million times the mass of the sun. Astronomers tracked stars orbiting it for decades, and in 2020 Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez shared the Nobel Prize in Physics for the work.
Optimism and distance
In astrology Sagittarius is ruled by Jupiter and linked with travel, philosophy and long-range aim. The arrow on its glyph points up and to the right.
How to find it
Sagittarius lies just east of Scorpius, low in the south on summer evenings. Look for a group of eight stars that looks like a teapot, with the spout pointing toward the scorpion. On a dark night, the Milky Way rises from the spout like steam.
On the star chart
The chart shows the centaur drawing a golden bow with a yellow cloak streaming behind him. Below him is a green wreath, the Southern Crown (Corona Australis), and the title also names two newer inventions, Microscopium and Telescopium, the microscope and the telescope, which French astronomer Lacaille added in the 1750s.
Little-known facts
- In 1977 the Big Ear radio telescope recorded a strong 72-second signal from the direction of Sagittarius. The astronomer who saw it wrote "Wow!" on the printout, and it has never been repeated.
- The Teapot's lid and spout are visible even from a city, but the Milky Way "steam" needs dark skies.
- The Galactic Center was first located by Harlow Shapley, who mapped globular clusters in Sagittarius in the 1910s.
- The December solstice sun now stands in Sagittarius, though the Tropic of Capricorn still carries the old name.
- The constellation has many star clusters and nebulae, including the Lagoon and Trifid nebulae.
Sagittarius appears on our:
