Starwatch: the summer spectacle of the Milky Way

Now is the best time for those of us in the northern hemisphere to see the great star cloud that is our galaxy of 200 billion stars

One of the greatest sights you can see in the summer night sky from the northern hemisphere are the star clouds of the Milky Way rising up into the sky from the deep south. They reach up between the constellations Sagittarius, the archer, and Ophiuchus, the serpent bearer. The Milky Way is our galaxy, home to the sun's 200 billion stellar siblings, with all of them arranged in a big disc that bulges towards the centre.