Constellation Chart

Lyra

Lyra is one of the ancient musical instruments. The constellation is positioned at the West Side of summer's Milky Way around the zenith, and formed with tiny triangle and parallelogram. This constellation is in the shape of lyre of Orpheus given by his father, Apollo.

The constellation is small and faint, but it's home to the fifth brightest star of Vega with a magnitude of 0, emitting a pure white light. Vega has a mean of "The Falling Eagle", and represents a jewel of Lyra. The star is also popular in Japan as a heroine of an ancient Chinese legend of "Tanabata".

Myth

One story associates this constellation with Arion's lyre, but most speak of the lyre of Orpheus, a son of the god Apollo and Calliope, one of the muses. He married Eurydice, a nymph who died early in the marriage when bitten by a snake. Orpheus refused all consolation and journeyed to the underworld, armed only with his lyre. Above ground he was capable of charming animals and trees, below ground he charmed Cerberus, the multi-headed dog; Charon, the ferryman over the river Styx; the snake haired Furies; and finally the rulers of the underworld, great Hades and Persephone. They agreed to return Eurydice to the surface provided she would walk behind her husband, and he not look back. We have yet to hear a story where such instructions get followed. Torn by doubts, Orpheus looked back. We might forgive him, but the powers of the deep never do. Orpheus saw his wife. They reached for each other, but she melted from his grasp. The gates of the deep crashed, closing on Eurydice, and hurling Orpheus on the surface of the earth.

Orpheus wandered alone seven months, singing and playing the lyre. Trees and flowers followed him. Beasts and birds came to listen. A band of women in a drunken frenzy, followers of Dionysus, encountered him. When he would not have sex with them, they tore him limb from limb, scattering his remains and taking his head to the island of Lesbos. The rest of his body received burial in Thrace, where the nightingales now sing more sweetly than anywhere else on earth. Apollo bent down from heaven, gathered the lyre, and placed it in the sky.

In a sequel: At the time of Christ there existed a mystery cult dedicated to Orpheus. Stressing ecstatic experience without the use of alcohol, the members also celebrated the ritualized death of Dionysus.

Galaxies In Lyra

NGC2419

Minkowski 1-64, by some called "the other ring nebula in Lyra". However, observing this nebula will not reveal any ring structure. The nebula is hard to locate. There are very few easy way points for star hopping. But using a UHC, UltraBlock, O-III or similar filter will quite easily reveal it in your field. The map in Hynes also helps, even if those maps tend to be a bit misleading at times.

NGC 6745

What appears as a bird's head, leaning over to snatch up a tasty meal, is a striking example of a galaxy collision in NGC 6745. A large spiral galaxy, with its nucleus still intact, peers at the smaller passing galaxy (nearly out of the field of view at lower right), while a bright blue beak and bright whitish-blue top feathers show the distinct path taken during the smaller galaxy's journey. These galaxies did not merely interact gravitationally as they passed one another, they actually collided.

When galaxies collide, the stars that normally comprise the major portion of the luminous mass of each of the two galaxies will almost never collide with each other, but will pass rather freely between each other with little damage. This occurs because the physical size of individual stars is tiny compared to their typical separations, making the chance of physical encounter relatively small. In our own Milky Way galaxy, the space between our Sun and our nearest stellar neighbor, Proxima Centauri (part of the Alpha Centauri triple system), is a vast 4.3 light-years.

However, the situation is quite different for the interstellar media in the above two galaxies - material consisting largely of clouds of atomic and molecular gases and of tiny particles of matter and dust, strongly coupled to the gas. Wherever the interstellar clouds of the two galaxies collide, they do not freely move past each other without interruption but, rather, suffer a damaging collision. High relative velocities cause ram pressures at the surface of contact between the interacting interstellar clouds. This pressure, in turn, produces material densities sufficiently extreme as to trigger star formation through gravitational collapse. The hot blue stars in this image are evidence of this star formation.

NGC 6765

NGC 6765, which is more difficult than I though it would be. This has to be one of the most difficult NGC planetaries? It lies inside a triangle of stars and is very mottled in its appearance. I believe to have read that it is a bipolar planetary. It is very nice under good conditions and you will see a thick rod NE-SW with more nebulosity around it on both sides.

M57 (NGC6720)

M57 (NGC6720) known as the Ring Nebula, is one of the finest planetary nebula in the skies. It's very popular as "The Doughnut Nebula" in Japan. The ring itself should be clearly visible in medium scopes, and better to have high magnification because of its extremely small size of only 80 arc seconds. The central star with the fifteenth magnitude, which had discharged the gas into space, may take a little longer scope. It is located between beta and gamma Lyrae, and is about 2100 light years away. This photograph has been taken with a film that has low sensitivity for reddish color. So the image shows you fairly greenish ring that has been emitted by oxygen molecules. Actually the nebula shows us various colors according to brands of photo films, I think the color of this image has comparatively close impression to real view with your own naked eyes.

Planetary Destinations In Lyra

Zeta Lyrae

Zeta Lyrae Known as a Double Star System is in fact a star based planetary system with a large blue gases planet called Zeta Lyrae B.

HD 178911

Parent Star: HD 178911 B (G5 V) in the constellation of Lyra is located at a distance of 152.41 Light Years from our Solar system Co-ordinates of Right Ascension: 19 09 03.1039 & Declination: 34 35 59.454. The apparent Magnitude of the star is Magnitude: 7.98. The Inner Edge of Habitability Zone is 0.5 AU & the Outer Edge of Habitability Zone: 1.56 AU and the estimated stellar lifespan of the star is 15185 million years. Orbiting around HD 178911 B is planet HD 178911 Bb the planet is believed to be a clarified jovian and its exitence has been confirmed. The Planets Appearance is blue and cloudless. The planet Orbits the star at mean orbital distance of 0.32 AU. outside of habitability zone. The planet Orbits around the star every 71.487 ± 0.018 Days and was discovered by Michel Mayor, Dominique Naef, Francesco Pepe, Didier Queloz, Nuno C. Santos, Stephane Udry, Michel Burnet in 2001.

HD 178911 B is part of a double star system. Component A is a G1V yellow dwarf.

HD 177830

Parent Star: HD 177830 (K0 V) in the constellation of Lyra is located at a distance of 192.43 Light Years from our Solar system Co-ordinates of Right Ascension: 19 05 20.7735 & Declination: +25 55 14.379. The apparent Magnitude of the star is Magnitude: 7.175. The Inner Edge of Habitability Zone is 1.08 AU & the Outer Edge of Habitability Zone: 3.37 AU and the estimated stellar lifespan of the star is 6243 million years. Orbiting around HD 177830 is planet HD 177830 b the planet is believed to be a clarified jovian, eccentric and its exitence has been confirmed. The Planets Appearance is blue and cloudless. The planet Orbits the star at mean orbital distance of 1 AU. outside of habitability zone. The planet Orbits around the star every 391 Days and was discovered by Marcy et al in 1999.

HD 177830 is located on the southern boundary of the constellation Lyra, the Lyre. Though not visible to the naked eye it is near the extremely bright star Vega, which is suspected to have a protoplanetary disk. HD 177830 has a mass 50% greater than Jupiter but it orbits its star at the same distance that the earth orbits the sun.

GSC 02652-01324

Parent Star: GSC 02652-01324 (K0 V) in the constellation of Lyra is located at a distance of 500 Light Years from our Solar system Co-ordinates of Right Ascension: 19 04 09.8 & Declination: +36 37 57. The apparent Magnitude of the star is 11.79. The Inner Edge of Habitability Zone is 0.35 AU & the Outer Edge of Habitability Zone: 1.09 AU and the estimated stellar lifespan of the star is 15185 million years. Orbiting around GSC 02652-01324 is planet TRES-1 the planet is believed to be a cloudy hot Jupiter and its exitence has been confirmed. The Planets Appearance is Silicate clouds over dark sodium haze. The planet Orbits the star at mean orbital distance of 0.039 ± 0.0007 AU. outside of habitability zone. The planet Orbits around the star every 3.030065 ± 0.000008 Days and was discovered by Alonso et al in 2004.