Future North Star Seen in the East

High in the eastern sky after dark is a small constellation shaped like a parallelogram. This is Lyra and it is easily found by locating its brightest star, Vega. Though it is a small constellation, Lyra has some fascinating aspects that make it worth viewing.

Lyra is said to represent a Lyre, a musical instrument like a harp. The traditional Greek mythology says that Lyre is a magical harp that Apollo gave to Orpheus, one of the Argonauts. The music from the harp charmed every living thing, but most of all, it charmed the love of Orpheus' life: the sea nymph Eurydice.

The two married and lived long and happily until one day Eurydice was bitten by a snake and died. Orpheus was so grief stricken that he traveled to Hades to try and get her back. Pluto, the god of the underworld, was very much moved by the music from the harp and he took pity on Orpheus. and offered him the chance to carry Eurydice out of Hades. The only condition was that Orpheus must not look at his love until he was out of Hades. This he could not do however, and the moment Orpheus gazed upon Eurydice, she vanished. Orpheus never fell in love again and a group of Thracian women became so upset with his rejection, that they dismembered his body and threw his head and Lyre into the river Hebrus. Zeus then placed Orpheus' Lyre into the heavens as a tribute to eternal love.

An even more romantic story about the stars of Lyre come from both China and Japan. It is called the Magpies and the Milky Way. The story tells of a beautiful young princess, daughter of Sky God, who was the most skilful weaver in the land. One day she glanced up from her loom and saw a herdsman. The two fell in love at once.

The princess begged her father to allow her to marry the herdsman and finally Sky God agreed. The two were married and were so much in love that they began to neglect their duties. The princess did not weave her special cloth and the herdsman neglected his animals. Sky God decided that the two must be punished.

Sky God placed the princess and the herdsman in the sky on opposite sides of a river of stars (the herdsman is represented by the stars of Aquila.) The two could see each other but neither could cross the river. The two lovers had no choice but to return to their work, but both were very sad.

Seeing his daughter so sad was too much for Sky God and at last he took pity on them. He decided that the two could be together one night a year, on the seventh day of the seventh month, if they could find their way across the river. On that one special night, a group of magpies came and formed a bridge across the river for the princess to cross and the two could be together for that one night.

For observers around 40 degrees N latitude, Lyre is about halfway up in the eastern sky after dark. To locate it, look for the bright star Vega. It is a small constellation, you could cover the entire group of stars with your open hand at arm's length.

Vega is one of three bright stars that form an asterism called the Summer Triangle. An asterism is a familiar grouping of stars that form some shape, but are not a recognized constellation, the best known of which is the Big Dipper. Vega is the first of the three to rise. The others are Altair in the constellation Aquila to the south of Vega, and Deneb, to the north in the constellation Cygnus. Incidentally, when you look from Deneb to Altair, you are looking along the Milky Way.

Vega itself is an interesting object. From mid-northern latitudes, Vega is visible at some point during the night year round. Unlike many of the bright stars in our night skies, Vega is a main sequence star only about 2.4 times the mass of our Sun. It is bright because it is so close to us, only 26 light years (a light year is the distance that light travels in one year, about six trillion miles.)

In December 2003, astronomers at Edinburgh believe they discovered evidence for a planet around Vega. After analysing the data, the astronomers believe that Vega may have a solar system more similar to ours than any other system discovered yet. There is evidence for a Neptune sized planet at about the same distance that Neptune orbits our Sun. That could mean that there are smaller rocky worlds closer to Vega.

If you have binoculars, you should take a look at epsilon Lyre, about 1.5 degrees from Vega. It is not a bright star, only fifth magnitude, so you will need dark skies to locate it. Binoculars will show the star to be a double star, two stars orbiting around each other. That isn't all though, a six inch or larger telescope will show that both of these stars each have a companion star around it - a double double!

One of the best known objects in Lyre, is the famous Ring Nebula, M57. You need dark skies, and at least a four inch telescope to see it but it is definitely worth a look. M57 is a planetary nebula, a ring of ionized gas ejected by a star near the end of its main sequence life. The nebula is about six degrees from Vega, about halfway between Beta and Gamma Lyre.

There is one more interesting fact about Vega: that it will one day be our North Star. A slight wobble in Earth's daily rotation causes our north pole to trace a circle among the stars every 26,000 years. This motion is called precession and it causes the pole to point at different stars over this 26,000 year period. During the time of when the pyramids were built in ancient Egypt, the star Thuban in Draco was the north star. In about 12,000 AD, the Earth's north pole will point at Vega. Happy Stargazing!

Constellations

The Solar System