Vega

Now, the cause of all this preparation was that on the 7th of July, the Herd Boy Star and the Spinning Maiden Star crossed the Milky Way to meet each other.

These are the stars which we call Capricornus and Alpha Lyra.

These stars that shine and glitter so far up in the zenith are the boy with an ox and the girl with a shuttle, about whom the story runs as follows.

on the banks of the silver river of heaven which we call the milky way there lived a beautiful maiden who was the daughter of the sun her name was she did not care for games or play like her companions and thinking nothing of vain display wore only the simplest of dress yet she was very diligent and made many garments for others indeed so busy was she that all called her the weaving or spinning princess the sun king noticed the serious disposition and close habits of his daughter and tried in various ways to get her to be more lively at last he thought to marry her as marriages in the star land are usually planned by the parents and not by the foolish lover boys and girls he arranged the union without consulting his daughter the young man on whom the sun-king thus bestowed his daughter's hand was kingin who kept a herd of cows on the banks of the celestial stream he had always been a good neighbor and living on the same side of the river the father thought that he would get a nice son-in-law and at the same time improve his daughter's habits and disposition No sooner did the maiden become wife than her habits and character utterly changed for the worse, and the father had a very vexatious case of tanashiku suguru, too much of a good thing, on his hands.

Lift your gaze way up to find a bright star that's almost directly overhead.

That's Vega.

It's relatively close as stars go, just 25 light years away.

And, by the way, Vega plays a big role in the classic science fiction movie Contact.

Now, since Vega is right overhead at nightfall, let's use it to find three nearby compact four-sided patterns.

The first of these is to Vega's immediate left, toward east.

You're looking for a parallelogram about as long as three outstretched fingers.

These are the main stars of the constellation Lyra, the lyre, and Vega is its alpha star.

Little wonder black holes are the densest objects in the universe.

Located just above the northern horizon this time of the year is the star Vega.

It's the brightest star in the constellation Lyra and the fifth brightest star in the night sky.

Vega has about twice the mass of our sun, and it's a relatively young star, less than five hundred million years old, and it's also fairly close, just twenty-five light years away.

Now, once again, due to the precession of Earth's rotational axis, Vega used to be the northern pole star around fourteen thousand years ago, and it will do so again in another twelve thousand years' time.

Just above Vega is Alpha Aquilae or Altair, the brightest star in the constellation Aquila.

It's a spectral type A white-yellow star with about twice the mass of our sun.

Altair is located really nearby, just sixteen point seven light years away, and it rotates very rapidly with an equatorial velocity of about two hundred and eighty-six kilometers per second, and that's a significant fraction of the star's estimated breakup speed of around four hundred kilometers per second.

Now, the cause of all this preparation was that on the 7th of July, the herd boy star and the spinning maiden star crossed the Milky Way to meet each other.

These are the stars which we call Capricornus and Alpha Lyra.

These stars that shine and glitter so far up in the zenith are the boy with an ox and the girl with a shuttle, about whom the story runs as follows.

On the banks of the silver river of heaven, which we call the Milky Way, there lived a beautiful maiden, who was the daughter of the sun.