We are all familiar with the big constellations out there: Orion the Hunter, Ursa Major the Great Bear, Scorpius the... well... Scorpion, and so on. They are monstrous, most of them, stretching across the sky and dotted with intensely bright stars which give them their familiar geometry.

But there are others - actually many others - we have not heard of, much less seen up there. These tiny collections of stars are like bit actors in the Big Scene, filling in the celestial sphere while we focus on the big "stars."

Well, in honor of those disenfranchised constellations, we are going to take a look at four of them which are right above our heads tonight: Vulpecula, Sagitta, Delphinus, and Equuleus. Let's bring them into the spotlight.

We will use a famous asterism to help set our frame of reference, the Summer Triangle.  Go outside in the next few nights during the 9 o'clock hour and face south. Look almost directly above your head. There are three extremely bright stars outlining the great Triangle. The one most southerly, the "bottom" of our triangle, is Altair. And it is in the bottom half of this triangle that we find our first two constellations: Vulpecula and tiny Sagitta.

Vulpecula (Latin for little fox) is a tough one to see in light-polluted skies. It's brightest stars are about 4th magnitude, meaning if you are in a city of blinding lights you will not see the faint fox. In an historical perspective, no one saw the fox until the 17th century when the astronomer Johannes Helvelius put it there. Actually he placed a fox and a goose there, but the fox apparently devoured said goose because it is no longer a part of the constellation. For some reason, only the sly fox remains.

You have a better chance of seeing Sagitta. It is one the smallest constellations in the sky but is accented by two "sort of" bright stars just north of bright Altair, inside our triangle's bottom. Those two stars make up The Arrow, which is what Sagitta means in Latin. Where the arrow comes from is a matter of conjecture. One story has it that the arrow is from nearby Hercules and headed for the eagle, Aquila. Its popularity as an arrow is not just a Graeco-Roman thing, either; the Persians and Hebrews put one there, as well.

Now we leave the triangle. Just to the left of the bottom of the triangle and bordering the Fox and the Arrow is Dephinus, the dolphin. This one you can see on a clear night, and it actually looks rather like a dophin! Go figure.

A little to the east of Altair is the dim quadrangle of stars that make up the dolphin's body, with a star dangling out for its tail. Many cultures place a dolphin or fish there, but the quad itself is also called Job's Coffin. To be sure, the stars look like a coffin, but why "Job's" coffin is a mystery.

And finally, the second tiniest of all the western constellations and one of the most unknown: Equuleus, the Little Horse. Just to the southeast of Delphinus, it is so nondescript I cannot even tell you how to find it other than to refer to the star chart.

That it exists at all is truly a wonder. Why the ancients consecrated just a handful of the dimmest stars in the sky as an official constellation is a puzzle. Is the Little Horse related to giant Pegasus next door? Is it part of some other lesser myth? Why wasn't it just tacked on to a nearby constellation like Delphinus? It could have been The Dolphin in its Froth of Tiny Bubbles.

Learn anything new? Hope so. Anything that may get you money on Jeopardy? Probably not. But if you find yourself a little more interested in the skies above, good for all of us.

Until next time, clear skies!