Lyra

What is Lyra?

Constellations· Summer evenings (N) · small parallelogram beside Vega. Small but unmissable in summer — zero-magnitude Vega blazes at the zenith, with the little parallelogram of the lyre beside it.

Where Lyra is in your sky right now: https://nowsky.org/solar/sky?sel=con:Lyra — location and time set automatically, no login.

Stars of the figure

The 1 brightest of the 5 stars used in the figure (5 lines). Lower magnitude means brighter.

Deep-sky objects near this constellation

Constellation basics

Figures are representative approximations. Source: compiled from NASA and IAU public data.

Frequently asked

When can I see Lyra?

summer.

What is the brightest star in Lyra?

Vega, magnitude 0.

In one line, what is Lyra?

Constellations — Small but unmissable in summer — zero-magnitude Vega blazes at the zenith, with the little parallelogram of the lyre beside it.

Where is Lyra in the sky right now?

Open the sky view for your location and time and it shows the position in the sky right now.

The first star ever photographed, in 1850

Vega was the first star ever photographed. On the night of 16 July 1850 a daguerreotype plate attached to the 15-inch refractor of Harvard College Observatory was exposed for 100 seconds and recorded Vega's image. The Sun and Moon had been photographed earlier, but this was the first photograph of a night-time star, and in 1872 Henry Draper chose Vega again for the first photograph of a stellar spectrum.

Vega was the target of these first attempts because it is bright, high in the sky and white, which suited the plates of the day. It later served for decades as the zero point of the magnitude scale, and in 1983 the IRAS satellite found a dust disk around it, the beginning of the study of forming planetary systems. Whenever observational astronomy has tested a new tool, this star overhead in summer has often been aimed at first.

The constellation in depth

Lyra is palm-sized yet rules the summer sky through one star: zero-magnitude Vega. In Greek myth it is Orpheus's lyre, the instrument that charmed the underworld.

The little parallelogram beside Vega is the instrument's body. Epsilon Lyrae within it is the famous 'double double' — two binaries orbiting each other — and the Ring Nebula (M57) hides inside the same frame.

In East Asia Vega is the Weaver Girl, facing the Herder (Altair) across the Milky Way in the Qixi/Chilseok tale. Look straight up on a summer night.

Lyra holds a famous ring: M57, the Ring Nebula, a shell of gas cast off by a dying Sun-like star — our own Sun will leave a similar ring in about five billion years. And thanks to Earth's axial precession, Vega itself will take over as the pole star in roughly 12,000 years; Polaris is only filling in.

Related

Figures are representative approximations. Simulated positions use J2000 mean elements.