Bob Moler's Ephemeris Blog

Tuesday, June 28th.  Today the sun will be up for 15 hours and 32 minutes, setting at 9:31.   The moon, 3 days before new, will rise at 4:19 tomorrow morning.  Tomorrow the sun will rise at 6:00.

High in the east at 11 p.m. can be found a bright star just above a small, narrow, but very distinctive parallelogram of stars.  They are the stars of the constellation Lyra the harp.  The bright star is Vega, one of the twenty one brightest stars, called first magnitude stars.  Vega is actually the 5th brightest night time star. The harp, according to Greek mythology, was invented by the god Hermes.  The form of the harp in the sky, is as he had invented it: by stretching strings across a tortoise shell.  Hermes gave it to his half-brother Apollo, who in turn gave it to the great musician Orpheus.  In binoculars, near Vega, two stars appear together.  They barely appear to the unaided eye as one star, called Epsilon Lyrae.

* Times are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan.  They may be different for your location.

Addendum

The constellations Lyra, Cygnus and Aquila. Created using Stellarium.

Lyra has some interesting treats for the telescope.

Lyra in Binoculars. Created using Stellarium.

Epsilon (ε) Lyrae, near Vega is easier to split than this image.  In good telescopes each of its stars is again split into two stars.  Amateur astronomers call it the Double-Double Star.  Not mentioned in the program is the Ring Nebula.  It isn’t visible in small finder telescopes, but if you have a telescope point the finder directly between the stars Sheliak and Sulafat, and the ghostly ring of the Ring Nebula will be near in the telescope.