Bob Moler's Ephemeris Blog

Ephemeris for Tuesday, August 14th. The Sun rises at 6:44. It’ll be up for 14 hours and 6 minutes, setting at 8:50. The Moon, 3 days past new, will set at 11:00 this evening.

Aquila the eagle is a constellation that lies in the Milky Way. It’s in the southeastern sky as it gets dark. Its brightest star, Altair is one of the stars of the Summer Triangle, a group of three bright stars dominating the eastern sky in the evening now. Altair, in the head of the eagle, is flanked by two slightly dimmer stars, the shoulders of the eagle. The eagle is flying northeastward through the Milky Way. Its wings are seen in its wing tip stars. A curved group of stars to the lower right of Altair is its tail. Within Aquila the Milky Way shows many dark clouds as part of the Great Rift that splits it here. The other summer bird is Cygnus the swan above and left of Aquila, flying in the opposite direction. ……

The times given are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan. They may be different for your location.

Addendum

Animated Aquila finder chart. Created using Stellarium.

Annotated and animated photograph taken of Aquila August 13, 2018 during the Perseid meteor shower. Alas, no Perseids in this photograph. Taken by me and processed using Registax and GIMP.

Further notes on the Perseid meteor shower

I spent a good chunk of the Perseid peak night (August 12/13) at the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore at the Dune Climb observing the Perseids.  Though clear there was a great amount of haze in the air, part of which was smoke from the fires out west, and the barometric high we’ve been under for the past few days getting stagnant,  The blue sky the day before was decidedly milky.  Though the Milky Way overhead was visible, the teapot of Sagittarius below Saturn wasn’t.

A casual inspection of my photographs show only 2 Perseid meteors.