How to find Lyra
Small but brilliant — led by Vega and hiding the famous Ring Nebula.
Vega — the brilliant blue-white star that dominates summer evenings.
Lyra is a small constellation with an outsized presence, because it contains Vega — one of the brightest stars in the sky and a corner of the Summer Triangle. On summer evenings Vega blazes almost directly overhead.
Just below Vega is a small, neat parallelogram of stars that makes the constellation easy to pin down.
How to find it
- Look nearly overhead on summer evenings for a single very bright blue-white star — Vega
- Just south-east of Vega is a small parallelogram of four fainter stars
- Vega forms the Summer Triangle with Deneb and Altair
Deep-sky highlights
- Ring Nebula (M57) — a textbook planetary nebula
- Double Double (Epsilon Lyrae) — two close pairs of stars
Stella shows exactly when Lyra is highest from your location tonight — and whether the sky is worth it.
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