Quick: How many constellations does the Milky Way traverse? Don’t know, do you? Neither did I until I looked it up. It’s 27. Not one is high and prominent this month for Northern Hemisphere observers.
But if someone asked where our galaxy looks brightest, you’d correctly say Sagittarius. In pristine dark places where the Teapot
asterism is overhead — the Southern Hemisphere — the Milky Way is so bright that it casts shadows. Its exact center is marked by the radio source Sagittarius A* (pronounced, “A-star”), which corresponds to the 4.3 million-solar-mass black hole around which our entire galaxy pivots. That visually rich region is a good reason to make a pilgrimage far south of your ZIP code. Down there, the Milky Way also runs through the Southern Cross, Crux, currently overhead in Chile and Australia.
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