slowly sweeping across the Milky Way along an imaginary line from the bright star Altair toward the even brighter star Vega. About one third of the way, the Coathanger should be spotted easily against a darker region of the Milky Way. The asterism is best seen in July–August and north of 20° north latitude as compared to the closest horizon it will be upside-down (as in the picture top right of this page) when at its highest point. South of this latitude it is upright as the 'hanger' is south of the line of 6 stars. The asterism and its immediate surroundings are a useful gauge for determining the faintest stars visible in a small telescope as there are a wide range of stellar magnitudes within the cluster easily viewed in one small patch of the sky. There follows a table of the 10 stars commonly seen as members of the coathanger, organized by right ascension. They diverge in distance; HD 182955 and that suffixed -620 are, quite considerably, mutually the closest but certainly not gravitationally bound. The former has a proper motion on the second axis of −47.5 mas per year; the latter one of +9.8. This pair sit "across the hook" (i.e. widthways) as to their places in the asterism. The faintest of the three bright stars, with resultant Flamsteed numbers, in this asterism is slightly dimmer than one without such a designation, and is joined by the six other stars in having a relatively similar Henry Draper catalog number, due to their position in the night sky and having sufficient apparent brightness (visible wavelength magnitude) to make the catalog. NGC 6802 The "rail" of the coathanger leads, east, into an open star cluster of dozens of much more distant stars, likely mostly a true cluster (being gravitationally tied or associated). Measurements put them initially at about 4,580 light years away however the same authors have refined their view and state they are a further 4,420 light years away, in a report which invokes Early Gaia Data Release 3, and 6th "internal" Gaia-ESO survey measurements. References Cragin, Murray; Lucyk, James; & Rappaport, Barry (1993). The Deep Sky Field Guide to Uranometria 2000.0 (1st ed). Richmond, VA: Willmann-Bell. Dias, W.S.; Lépine, J.R.D.; & Alessi, B.S. (2001). "Proper motions of open clusters within 1 kpc based on the TYCHO2 Catalogue". Astronomy and Astrophysics 376, 441-447 Hall, D.S. & VanLandingham, F.G.