Vulpecula and Sagitta are two small constellations underneath Cygnus. Their origins are, however, quite different. Vulpecula was one of Johannes Hevelius’ creations, introduced in 1687. It was originally represented as a fox carrying a goose in its mouth and its full name was Vulpecula cum Ansere (fox with goose). The goose has now disappeared, but its name survives in the name of Alpha Vulpeculae. By contrast, notwithstanding its small size, Sagitta was one of the ancient constellations. It represents an arrow, but there was no agreement even in ancient times about the identity of the archer who fired it.

Vulpecula has several interesting objects despite its small size. The most prominent is the Dumbbell Nebula [1] or Messier 27, which is both bright enough and large enough to be obvious even in a small telescope. To the eye in a telescope, it looks like two overlapping grey triangles. Its magnitude is 7.4 and it is about 1,360 light-years distant. Roughly three degrees south-east of 15 Vulpeculae is the star cluster NGC 6885 [2], which is also Caldwell 37. It is a rather sparse cluster, magnitude 5.7, which contains the star 20 Vulpeculae (and hence is sometimes called the 20 Vulpeculae cluster) but this is a coincidence as 20 Vulpeculae is 1,140 light-years away and the cluster is 800 light-years more distant.

North-east of 15 Vulpeculae (and south of 41 Cygni) is NGC 6940 [3], another star cluster which is also loose and is remarkably (for a cluster) nearly a billion years old. It is magnitude 6.3 and lies roughly 2,500 light-years distant. Perhaps the best-known object in Vulpecula is the Coathanger [4], also known as Brocchi’s Cluster (after the American amateur astronomer Dalmero Francis Brocchi) and Collinder 399 (after a catalogue of star clusters compiled by the Swedish astronomer and historian Per Collinder). It looks remarkably like a coathanger and can be easily found by following a line from Albireo through Anser to Altair (and hence one side of the Summer Triangle asterism). It is best viewed in binoculars. First noted by the Persian astronomer Al-Sufi as a hazy spot in 964, it was long thought to be a star cluster, but the Hipparcos survey has shown it to be a line-of-sight asterism. 

Sagitta only has one deep-sky object of interest, the globular cluster M71 [5]. This is a rather loose globular cluster, which for many years was considered to be a closely packed open star cluster. It about 9 billion years old and lies 13,000 light-years away. At magnitude 8.2 it is not easy to find in small telescopes; it lies between Gamma Sagittae and Delta Sagittae.