Look for Vega and Lyra the Harp in the June skies
Jun 10, 2020, 3:00 PM
As the summer season is right around the corner, we have some amazing sights to see in our Arizona skies!
Simply look to the northeast sky any clear June evening and you will notice a rather bright star
sitting right before your eyes.
This is the bright star we call Vega!
Vega is a most interesting star and one that lies within a distance of 25 light years from the Earth. Thus, the light from Vega that you see tonight, left the star in 1995.
Vega is one of the brightest stars in the night sky and comes in at No. 5 of the moist luminous stars in the night sky.
Vega was the pole star, around 12,000 B.C., and will return to that special designation around the year 13,727 A.D.
Of all the stars in the sky, Vega was the first star other than the sun to be photographed. That was July 17, 1850, by astronomer William Bond, who used a daguerreotype.
Vega is a young hot star of stellar classification AOV and is thought to be only 455 million years old.
With a mass of over two times that of the sun, Vega will shine on for a long time to come
and is spinning so fast, that it would appear egg-shaped to an observer up close.
On a final Vega note, the sun and all the planets of our solar system are moving in the direction of Vega at speeds of some 200 miles per second.
This is due to the fact that we are moving in a giant circle around the center of the rotating Milky Way galaxy.
Vega lies well within the ancient constellation of Lyra the Harp.
Lyra was one of the original constellations in the night sky, listed by astronomer Ptolemy.
With only 286 square degrees of the night sky, this is a constellation rich in history and some amazing objects to view in binoculars and telescopes.
In Greek mythology Lyra was the lyre of Orpheus, made by Hermes out of the shell of a tortoise.
One of its many purposes was to silence the voices of the dangerous sirens.
With the naked eye under dark and moon less skies, Lyra looks like a small rectangle in
the sky.
If you look closer with a small telescope at the lower two stars of the rectangle, you will
come upon one of the most amazing sights in the night sky.
The tiny “doughnut in the sky” – the Ring Nebula.
Here is a finder chart for the constellation of Lyra, with the location of the Ring Nebula.
The Ring Nebula, also known as M57 of the Messier catalog, is a most interesting object.
This is a classic planetary nebula and one that was caused by the collapse of a star and a
huge explosion in space.
The Ring Nebula was discovered in January 1779 by the famed French comet observer, Charles Messier.
The nebula is located some 2,500 light yeas from the Earth and thus the light that you see
of the Ring Nebula tonight, left in the year 480 B.C.
The object requires a telescope to be seen in detail and looks like a small blue doughnut in the eyepiece of a telescope, coming in at +8.8 in stellar magnitude.
Here are more details on this celestial gem in our Arizona skies.
To print your own monthly star chart, click here.
To view satellites/dates/times of passage, click here.
Listen to the Dr. Sky Show on KTAR News 92.3 FM every Saturday at 3 a.m.
