Scutum
What is Scutum?
Constellations· Summer evenings (N) · Milky Way star cloud below Aquila. A small constellation holding the brightest knot of the summer Milky Way, the Scutum Star Cloud. Hevelius created it in 1684 as the shield of King John Sobieski of Poland. The Wild Duck Cluster M11 and the enormous star UY Scuti live here. Look at the Milky Way below Aquila in the Sky view.
📍 Visible from where you are right now — computed in your browser
bearing · altitude · rise time · best time tonight
Where Scutum is in your sky right now: https://nowsky.org/solar/sky?sel=con:Scutum — location and time set automatically, no login.
Stars of the figure
| Star | Magnitude |
|---|---|
| Ioannina | 3.9 |
The 1 brightest of the 2 stars used in the figure (1 lines). Lower magnitude means brighter.
Deep-sky objects near this constellation
Constellation basics
| Season | summer evenings (N) |
|---|---|
| Brightest star | Alpha Scuti (3.9) |
| How to find | south of Aquila's tail, above Sagittarius |
| Area rank | 88 |
Figures are representative approximations. Source: compiled from NASA and IAU public data.
Frequently asked
- When can I see Scutum?
- summer evenings (N).
- How do I find Scutum?
- south of Aquila's tail, above Sagittarius.
- What is the brightest star in Scutum?
- Ioannina, magnitude 3.9.
- Where is Scutum in the sky right now?
- Open the sky view for your location and time and it shows the position in the sky right now.
Delta Scuti — the prototype of the short-period pulsators
Delta Scuti looks like an ordinary star of magnitude 4.7, but it is a pulsating variable whose brightness changes by about 0.2 magnitude every 4.65 hours. Unlike Cepheids, which pulse over days, stars that breathe on a scale of hours are named Delta Scuti variables after this one, and several thousand are now known. Its variability was first confirmed in 1900.
Delta Scuti stars vibrate in many overlapping modes and are a principal subject of asteroseismology. The Kepler and TESS space telescopes measured their pulsations precisely and read off their interiors, and in 2020 a study reported regular patterns in oscillations that had previously seemed jumbled. A small constellation of faint stars has left its name on one of the methods for looking inside a star.
The constellation in depth
Scutum was created by Johannes Hevelius in 1684 under the name "Sobieski's Shield", honouring King John III Sobieski of Poland, who broke the Ottoman siege of Vienna in 1683. It is the only constellation named after a real historical person that survives today, and the fifth smallest in the sky.
Its stars are faint, but the backdrop is spectacular. The Scutum Star Cloud — a window through the dust toward the inner Milky Way — covers most of the constellation, and inside it the Wild Duck Cluster M11 packs thousands of stars into a V-shaped wedge, one of the richest open clusters known. UY Scuti, a red hypergiant some 1,700 times the Sun's width, also lies here.
On July–September evenings, move about 20 degrees south-west of Altair in Aquila to the spot where the Milky Way looks brightest — that is Scutum. From a city the star cloud is invisible, so hunt M11 with binoculars instead. In the Sky view, turn the Milky Way on and zoom in below Aquila.
Related
Figures are representative approximations. Simulated positions use J2000 mean elements.