vega star travel

Vega: The North Star of the Past and the Future

Vega is a bright star located just 25 light-years from Earth, visible in the summer sky of the Northern Hemisphere. The star is part of the constellation Lyra and, with the stars Deneb and Altair, forms an asterism known as  the Summer Triangle .

The star is only about 450 million years old, which makes it a youngster compared to our own solar system (which is 4.6 billion years old). Studies of Vega help astronomers learn more about solar systems that are in the early stages of their formation.

Because the Earth's axis wobbles, our perception of north gradually shifts to different stars over a 26,000-year cycle. Vega was the  North Star several thousand years ago , and it will regain that status in about 12,000 years.

Locating Vega

Vega is almost directly overhead at midnorthern latitudes on midsummer nights. Vega sinks below the horizon for only 7 hours a day and can be seen on any night of the year.

Farther south, Vega lies below the horizon for a longer period, but in Alaska, northern Canada and much of Europe, Vega never sets. The star's location is:

• Right ascension: 18h 36m 56.3s.
• Declination: 38 degrees 47 minutes 01 second.

Early observations

Because Vega's blue-white light is so bright — the star has an  apparent magnitude  of 0.03 — it features prominently in ancient cultures, ranging from the Chinese to the Polynesians to the Hindus. Vega's name comes from the Arabic word " waqi ," which means "falling" or "swooping."

"This is a reference to the time when people regarded the constellation Lyra as a swooping vulture rather than a lyre," wrote Michael Anissimov  on the website Wisegeek .

The name of Vega and those of other astronomical targets honor the  traditional importance of astronomy in Islam , noted one researcher. Following the stars allowed believers to mark the times of prayer and festivals, as well as to find the holy city of Mecca.

"Thus, hundreds of stars and constellations have Arabic names, such as Altair, Deneb, Vega and Rigel," wrote Nidhal Guessoum, an astrophysicist at the American University of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates, in a 2013 article published in the journal Nature .

In modern times, Vega was the  first star to be photographed,  other than the sun. Astronomers captured the image through the daguerreotype process at Harvard College Observatory, using a 15-inch (38 centimeters) refractor, on July 16-17, 1850.

The star was also chosen for the  first spectrographic image , in 1872. amateur astronomer Henry Draper was the first to break down Vega's light to reveal the various elements that make up the star.

Vega in recent years

Vega rose to prominence in popular culture in the late 1990s after Carl Sagan's novel " Contact" (1985, Simon & Schuster) was adapted into a  Hollywood movie . Starring Jodie Foster, the movie followed an astronomer working on the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) who discovers a signal appearing to emanate from Vega.

Telescopic observations in 2006 revealed that Vega is whipping around so quickly that its  poles are several thousand degrees warmer than its equator . The star, which rotates every 12.5 hours, is at 90 percent of its critical rotation speed, or the velocity at which the object would tear itself apart.

In early 2013, astronomers announced that they had  discovered an asteroid belt surrounding Vega , suggesting the possibility of planets within the rocks' midst. The layout (which resembled that found near the star Fomalhaut) suggests that there are two areas: an outer region with icy asteroids and a region closer to the star, where warmer space rocks reside.

Scientists are examining bright stars like Vega more closely using NASA's TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite)  mission, which launched in 2018 to conduct an all-sky survey. While the primary mission of TESS is to search for exoplanets, the satellite will also search for signs of star variability. TESS's examination of Vega and similar stars will help scientists learn more about the early stages of star evolution.

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Vega Star Facts on Our Future North Star

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Vega is the fifth-brightest star in the night sky and the second-brightest star in the northern celestial hemisphere (after Arcturus). Vega is also known as Alpha Lyrae (α Lyrae, Alpha Lyr, α Lyr), as it is the principle star in the constellation Lyra, the lyre. Vega has been one of the most important stars to humanity since ancient times because it is very bright and easily recognized by its blue color.

Vega, Our Sometime North Star

The Earth's axis of rotation precesses, like a wobbling toy top, which means "north" changes over a period of around 26,000 years. Right now, the North Star is Polaris, but Vega was the northern pole star around 12,000 BC and will the pole star again about the 13,727. If you took a long exposure photograph of the northern sky today, the stars would appear as trails around Polaris. When Vega is the pole star, a long exposure photograph would show stars circling it.

How to Find Vega

Vega is seen in the summer sky in the Northern Hemisphere, where it is part of the constellation Lyra. The " Summer Triangle " consists of the bright stars Vega, Deneb, and Altair. Vega is at the top of the triangle, with Deneb below it and to the left and Altair below both stars and to the right. Vega forms a right angle between the two other stars. All three stars are extremely bright in a region with few other bright stars.

The best way to find Vega (or any star) is to use its right ascension and declination:

• Right Ascension: 18h 36m 56.3s
• Declination: 38 degrees 47 minutes 01 second

There are free phone apps that you can use to seek Vega by name or by its location. Many allow you to wave the phone across the sky until you see the name. You're looking for a bright blue-white star.

In northern Canada, Alaska, and most of Europe, Vega never sets. In the mid-northern latitudes , Vega is almost directly overhead at night in mid-summer. From a latitude including New York and Madrid, Vega is only below the horizon about seven hours a day, so it can be viewed any night of the year. Further south, Vega is below the horizon more of the time and may be trickier to find. In the Southern Hemisphere, Vega is visible low on the northern horizon during the Southern Hemisphere's winter. It is not visible south of 51° S, so it cannot be seen at all from the southern part of South America or Antarctica.

Comparing Vega and the Sun

Although Vega and the Sun are both stars, they are very different from one another. While the Sun appears round, Vega is noticeably flattened. This is because Vegas has over twice the mass of the Sun and is spinning so rapidly (236.2 km/s at its equator), that it experiences centrifugal effects. If it were spinning about 10% faster, it would break apart! The equator of Vega is 19% bigger than its polar radius. Because of the star's orientation with respect to Earth, the bulge appears unusually pronounced. If Vega was viewed from above one of its poles, it would appear round.

Another obvious difference between Vega and the Sun is its color. Vega has a spectral class of A0V, which means it is a blue-white main-sequence star that fuses hydrogen to make helium. Because it is more massive, Vega burns up its hydrogen fuel more quickly than our Sun, so its lifetime as a main-sequence star is only about one billion years, or about a tenth as long as the Sun's life. Right now, Vega is about 455 million years old or half-way through its main-sequence life. In another 500 million years or so, Vega will become a class-M red giant, after which it will lose most of its mass and become a white dwarf.

While Vega fuses hydrogen , most of the energy at its core comes from the carbon-nitrogen-oxygen (CNO cycle) in which protons combine to form helium with intermediate nuclei of the elements carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen, This process is less efficient than the Sun's proton-proton chain reaction fusion and requires a high temperature of about 15 million Kelvin. While the Sun has a central radiation zone at its core covered by a convection zone , Vega has a convection zone at its core that distributes ash from its nuclear reaction. The convection zone is in equilibrium with the star's atmosphere.

Vega was one of the stars used to define the magnitude scale , so it has an apparent magnitude around 0 (+0.026). The star is about 40 times brighter than the Sun, but because it's 25 light-years away, it seems dimmer. If the Sun was viewed from Vega, in contrast, its magnitude would only be a faint 4.3.

Vega appears to be surrounded by a disk of dust. Astronomers believe the dust may have resulted from collisions between objects in a debris disk. Other stars that display excessive dust when viewed in the infrared spectrum are called Vega-like or Vega-excess stars. The dust is found mainly in a disk around the star rather than a sphere, with particle sizes estimated to be between 1 to 50 microns in diameter.

At this time, no planet has been definitively identified orbiting Vega, but its possible terrestrial planets could orbit near the star, probably in its equatorial plane.

Similarities between the Sun and Vega are that they both have magnetic fields and sunspots .

• Yoon, Jinmi; et al. (January 2010), "A New View of Vega's Composition, Mass, and Age",  The Astrophysical Journal ,  708  (1): 71–79
• Campbell, B.; et al. (1985), "On the inclination of extra-solar planetary orbits",  Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific ,  97 : 180–182
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