They then placed his magical lyre up into the stars as the constellation we see today. Talk about a tough crowd!Īpollo and the rest of the gods recovered what was left of Orpheus and buried him at the foot of Mount Olympus. The mob got so violent that a woman tore his head off and threw his body and lyre into a nearby river. As usual, he refused all of their advances. No one could replace Eurydice.Īfter one concert, when he was sneaking out the back door of the stage, a mob of women attacked him. When he went back on tour, he was mobbed by his fans, and now that he was single again, young women were throwing themselves at him. The grief-stricken Orpheus went into seclusion for over a year but finally pulled himself together enough to pick up his harp and resume his beautiful music. That’s why Orpheus took it so hard when his beloved was bitten by a poisonous snake and died nearly instantly. He had all the money and palaces anyone could ask for, but Eurydice was his greatest treasure. He went on tour and commanded vast amounts of money for his concerts. He married the beautiful Princess Eurydice and had a great life. Orpheus grew up to be a very handsome, talented man. Even fire-breathing dragons would be lulled to sleep by the soothing tones of Orpheus and his Lyre. His music was so wonderful that wild animals came to listen to his playing, and treetops would bend over to hear him. You won’t see the colors captured in the time exposure photo, but you might see a slight bluish tint to M57 through your scope. I took a picture of the Ring Nebula with my astrophotography setup to show you what to expect. That will happen to our sun in about 6 billion years. It’s a dying star blowing off the last shells of hydrogen and helium gas before it shrinks to a white dwarf. M57, more than 2,300 light years away, is known as a planetary nebula but has nothing to do with the distant solar system. Scan your scope about halfway between the two stars that make up the lower end of the parallelogram of Lyra, and you’ll see what looks almost like a little smoke ring. It’s known formally by astronomers as Messier Object 57 or M57. If you have a halfway decent telescope, see if you can spot the Ring Nebula in the constellation Lyra. Vega is moving slower around the Milky Way, so in about 60,000 years, we’ll pass by Vega, missing it by around 13 light years. Even though we are tearing along at half a million miles an hour, it will still take about 225 million years to make just one orbit around the center of our home galaxy. We’re headed in the general direction of Vega at a breakneck speed of 140 miles per second. Our sun is just one of at least 200 billion fellow stars in a spiral-shaped galaxy that spans 100,000 light years in diameter. That’s the general direction our sun, the solar system, and all of us travel in space as we orbit around our Milky Way galaxy. Have you ever wondered just where this world is going? Just look at Vega. It also means that the light you see from that star tonight has traveled a quarter of a century to get here. That works out to be about 5.8 trillion miles, so Vega is 25 light years away. A light year is the distance light travels in a year. To handle beastly stellar distances, astronomers tame them with light years.
It’s only 145 trillion miles away that’s considered close on a stellar scale. Vega’s extreme brightness is mainly due to it being a relatively close neighbor in our Milky Way. Call it a stellar coincidence … or maybe not. The stars just happen to fall in the same general line of sight from Earth. Good luck with that!Īstronomically, it may appear that the stars that make up the parallelogram are close celestial neighbors but that’s not the case. You may see Lyra as a little harp with your imagination on overdrive.
That’s about all there is to the constellation Lyra. Unless you have a real problem with light pollution, you should be able to see a small parallelogram of much fainter stars hanging to the lower right of Vega. Just after evening twilight, look for Vega, the brightest star in the high eastern sky near the overhead zenith. This is a super easy time of year to locate Vega and the constellation Lyra in the early evening sky. Vega is the third-brightest nighttime star seen around Minnesota and western Wisconin. It’s certainly not one of the most prominent constellations, but Lyra the Harp is a distinctive one with a super bright star.
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