Science & history · Star guide
Vega, the bright star of Lyra
Vega is the brightest star in the small constellation Lyra, the Lyre, and the brightest corner of the Summer Triangle. It is 25 light-years away: the light you see left it about 25 years ago.
How to spot it: The brightest corner of the Summer Triangle. Source (opens in a new tab)
What you are looking at
Vega is 25 light-years away in Lyra (opens in a new tab). In the Hipparcos measurements it is magnitude 0.03, fifth in ESA's list (opens in a new tab) of the brightest stars. Jim Kaler (opens in a new tab) contrasts it with its two northern rivals: Vega hot and white, Arcturus cool and orange, Capella yellow-white in between.
A disc of dust
In 2005 NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope picked up the heat of a dust cloud around Vega (opens in a new tab) and found it far larger than expected, reaching out at least 815 astronomical units, 815 times the distance from Earth to the Sun.
How to find it
Look for the Summer Triangle (opens in a new tab): Vega in Lyra, Deneb in Cygnus and Altair in Aquila. Vega is the brightest of the three. From mid-northern latitudes it passes nearly overhead; by this site's calculation it culminates about 88° up over Salt Lake City. Beside it hangs the small lyre shape of fainter stars, and between two of them, Sheliak and Sulafat (opens in a new tab), lies the Ring Nebula, which needs a telescope.
The weaver
In the oldest Chinese poetry the stars around Vega were the Weaving Sisters, and in the later love story Vega is the weaver, parted from the cowherd, Altair, by the Milky Way.
Where on Earth, and when
It rises from anywhere north of about 51°S.
North of about 51°N, it never sets.
It climbs at least 20° high, the finder's threshold for a suggestion, from anywhere north of about 31°S.
It is highest in the evening sky, at about 9 p.m. local time, in mid-August, from either hemisphere, wherever it rises. With daylight saving time, that is nearer 10 p.m. on the clock.
Worked out by this site from the Bright Star Catalogue, for a flat, clear horizon. Hills, buildings, haze and city light all cut into this; the air also lifts objects near the horizon by about half a degree. For your own place and night, use the sky finder.
Sources
- Astronomy NASA JPL, Tiny Particles, So Far Away (PIA07218, 2005) (opens in a new tab) for distance and the dust disc
- Astronomy ESA, Hipparcos: The 50 Brightest Stars (opens in a new tab) for magnitude and rank
- Astronomy Kat Troche (Astronomical Society of the Pacific), Connecting the Dots with Asterisms, NASA Night Sky Network (2024) (opens in a new tab) for the Summer Triangle
- Astronomy NASA Hubble, Messier 57 (the Ring Nebula) (opens in a new tab) for the Ring Nebula between Sheliak and Sulafat
- Astronomy Jim Kaler, Capella, STARS (University of Illinois) (opens in a new tab) for Vega's colour beside Arcturus and Capella
- Astronomy Bright Star Catalogue, 5th Revised Ed. (Hoffleit & Warren 1991), as computed by this site's star engine (opens in a new tab) for its height over Salt Lake City