Vega
Star · White main-sequence
Vega is one of the brightest stars in the sky and part of the “Summer Triangle”. It spins so fast that it bulges at its equator. Astronomers used it as the standard for measuring how bright other stars are.
- 25 light-years awayEven light – the fastest thing there is – needs 25 years to get here.
- LyraConstellation
- Very fast – slightly flattenedSpin
Take a closer look
A twelve-hour day
Vega spins all the way round in about 12 and a half hours – our Sun takes nearly a month. The spin flings its middle outwards, so its equator bulges and is cooler and dimmer than its poles. From Earth we see Vega almost pole-on, like looking down at a spinning top.
A young star
Vega is only about 450 million years old – a tenth of the Sun’s age. It is about twice as heavy as the Sun, so it burns its fuel faster and will live only around a billion years in all. When dinosaurs walked on Earth, Vega was already shining.
A puzzling smooth disc
Vega is circled by a wide disc of dust, a bit like a giant version of the icy belt beyond Neptune. When the Hubble and Webb telescopes looked closely, the disc turned out to be surprisingly smooth, with no clear gaps carved by big planets. Scientists are still puzzling over why.
How we found out
- 1850
Vega becomes the first star (after the Sun) ever photographed, at Harvard College Observatory.
- 1872
Henry Draper takes the first photograph of a star’s spectrum – Vega’s.
- 1983
The IRAS space telescope finds a disc of dust around Vega, a hint that planets could be forming there.
In the movie “Contact”, a message comes from Vega. Could aliens live there?
Vega is young and spins fast; any planets would be very different from Earth. But the question of life elsewhere is one of science’s biggest – nobody knows yet!
See it yourself
A brilliant blue-white star high overhead on summer evenings (Northern Hemisphere).
From the encyclopedia
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