August star night Elokuun tähtiyö

When is the next one

The next Elokuun tähtiyö will be held on Thursday, August 10, 2023.

Show fees

See Sunday night stargazing shows!

What's going on

In the event of a clear weather, we head the telescopes to the brightest objects of the starry sky that are visible on a horizontal summer night. Items may include the Moon, bright planets, double stars and spherical star clusters, depending on the year and time.

In the summer night of August, we can admire the beauty of the starry sky. In the sky, you can see a good luck with bright meteors, and even the northern lights are not excluded! In addition some years, in the early August, we can admire the shimmering night clouds in the northern sky for, though the night cloud season on the horizon of Tampere is just about to end at the August Star Night!

In cloudy weather, we offer another program in our auditorium.

This year, Saturn is relatively well visible, although still very close to the southeastern horizon. At the beginning of the show, the height of Saturn is about 5 degrees, but it rises during the night, and when the show ends, its height is already 17 degrees and the viewing direction is south.

The second planet of the night is Jupiter. When the show starts, it is rising on the horizon and during the night it will rise to a height of about 20 degrees. Jupiter is visible in the eastern sky.

The Moon is not a very striking object during the night. It rises higher during the show and manages to reach a height of about 14 degrees during the night. The moon appears as a narrow crescent in the northeast.

During the night, the asterism named "Summer Triangle" is very visible. The summer triangle is formed by the Denep star of the Cygnus constellation together with the Vega (Lyra) and Altair (Eagle) stars. The asterism is very large and it "fills" almost the entire southern sky. Each of these constellations is located in the region of the Milky Way and this galaxy of ours is visible well, although it is not yet at its best on a light summer night.

The star Albireo is located in the constellation Cygnus, which is a well-known double star whose components are an orange star and a blue star. There are many other similar pairs of stars in the sky, but Albireo is so easily visible that the color difference of its components is easily visible to anyone with a telescope. For this reason, it is often a viewing destination for star shows.

The star Vega guides to look at the "Ring Nebula of Lyra" in the constellation Lyra. It is known by the abbreviation M57. The nebula is a planetary nebula created after a sun-like star collapsed into a white dwarf. In this process, the star has lost much of its mass to space, now visible as a nebulous ring. A great object, but it can only be viewed in the August starry night at the end of the show.

In the constellation of Hercules there is one of the most spectacular globular star clusters, known by the abbreviation M13. Globular star clusters are old, even older than the Milky Way, and M13 is estimated to consist of about a million stars. They remain as one set due to mutual gravitation. The constellation Hercules is visible in the western sky during the night.

During the night, you can spot some bright stars in the starry sky. In the northeast shines Capella in the constellation Auriga, which is the sixth brightest star in the sky. Its brightness is approximately equal to that of Vega. Towards the end of the show, Castor and Pollux, who belong to the constellation Gemini, also rise above the horizon. They are visible on the northeast horizon.

Arcturus is visible in the northwest, which is the brightest star in Bootis. The star is the fourth brightest in the starry sky. The brightness is partly due to the fact that it is very close to us, only 37 light years away. The star's mass is 1.5 solar masses, but it is so-called an orange giant whose helium fusion may have begun. The star is 26 times the size of the Sun.