April 29, 2024
Look northeast tonight around 10 pm and you will find the bright star Vega rising. This is the fifth brightest star we can see in the night sky, and it will be the North Star in about 12,000 years.
Vega is the brightest star in the constellation Lyra. It is a class-A main sequence dwarf star that is 36 times more luminous than the Sun and 2.3 times more massive. At 400 million years old, Vega is roughly halfway through its main sequence. Image credit: Stephen Rahn.
