aquila
the eagle
✦ overview
the eagle of zeus carried the god's thunderbolts and was also said to have carried ganymede up to mount olympus. aquila sits in a rich part of the milky way and has one of the brightest stars visible from earth.
✦ facts
- altair rotates really rapidly, once every nine hours compared to our sun's 25 days. because of this it bulges at its equator, making it an oval-shaped star
- altair is one of the three stars forming the summer triangle asterism alongside vega and deneb. this is a useful landmark for navigating the summer night sky. not that we would be doing a lot of that right now
- a nova was observed in aquila in 1918 briefly making it one of the brightest stars in the sky