Bob Moler's Ephemeris Blog

Ephemeris for Thursday, July 25th.  The sun rises at 6:21.  It’ll be up for 14 hours and 54 minutes, setting at 9:15.   The moon, 3 days past full, will rise at 10:43 this evening.

The star Vega, which is nearly overhead or the zenith is a special star for astronomers.  It’s part of the small constellation of 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 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 orbiting it.

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

Addendum

Magnified view of Lyra showing Vega. Created using Stellarium.