Bob Moler's Ephemeris Blog

Ephemeris for Monday, July 23rd.  The sun rises at 6:19.  It’ll be up for 14 hours and 57 minutes, setting at 9:17.   The moon, 3 days before first quarter, will set at 11:14 this evening.

The star Vega, which is high in the east, near overhead or the zenith is a special star for astronomers.  It’s part of the small constellation or Lyra the harp, which includes the parallelogram of stars near it.  Vega is kind of a standard calibration star.  It is the 5th brightest night time star with a brightness of 0.0 magnitude, although recent measurements place it at 0.03.  Of the spectral types which  denote the star’s color and surface temperature, Vega comes out to be pure white, with a surface temperature nearly twice the sun’s.  It’s almost exactly 25 light years away, and so is one of the closer stars.  It’s a tenth the sun’s age and 40 times the sun’s brightness. [It has perhaps a Jupiter sized planet, and a Kuiper belt of Pluto like objects.]

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

Addendum

Lyra in Binoculars. Created using Stellarium.