Home › Night sky

Far from any lights, the sky fills with stars. Gold lines: the Teapot. Drawn from real star positions; bigger dots are brighter stars. See it from a city or the suburbs in the app.

✨ Constellation

Sagittarius

The Archer, whose brightest stars look like a teapot.

Name means: The Archer
Best seen: August evenings
Where to see it: The southern half of Earth, and low in the sky from much of the northern half
Brightest star: Kaus Australis
Stars in the pattern: 25

Shapes to look for

The Teapot. Its brightest stars make a teapot with a lid, a handle and a spout. On dark nights the Milky Way rises from the spout like steam.

Did you know?

When you look towards it, you are looking towards the centre of our galaxy.
The giant black hole Sagittarius A* lies in this direction, about 27,000 light-years away.

In this part of the sky

Sagittarius A* The giant black hole at the centre of our own galaxy.

The Milky Way Our home galaxy. The Sun is one of its hundreds of billions of stars. Scorpius The Scorpion, with red Antares at its heart.

More NASA photos of SagittariusStraight from NASA’s image library, in the app

Explore more

All of night sky

Orion The Hunter, with three bright stars in a row for his belt. Ursa Major The Great Bear, home of the Big Dipper. Ursa Minor The Little Bear, with Polaris at the tip of its tail. Cassiopeia A bright W of five stars, named after a boastful queen. Scorpius The Scorpion, with red Antares at its heart. Leo The Lion, whose head is a backwards question mark of stars.

Facts: Star patterns: d3-celestial (IAU figures, Hipparcos star data). Stories: traditional Greek and Roman myths. Open Sagittarius in the app.