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LYRA
A Small Northern Constellation
By: Sarah Higson, Matthew Wacter, and David Youngblood
The Legend of Lyra
Lyra represents the lyre played by Orpheus, musician of the Argonauts and son of Apollo and the muse
Calliope. Apollo gave his son the lyre as a gift, and Orpheus played it so well that even the wild beasts,
the rocks, and the trees were charmed by his music. Orpheus married a nymph named Eurydice who
was soon bitten by a snake and died from the poison. He went to the underworld to try and find her. He
charmed the king and queen of the underworld with his music and they granted him permission to take
her back to the land of the living. Orpheus received her, but on condition that he must not look back
until he had emerged from the valleys of Avernus or else the gift he had been given would be taken
from him. Eurydice looked back and died a second time. Orpheus
was so heartbroken that he rejected any women that came his way.
The women got mad and hurled rocks at the bard that tamed the
sound of the Lyre. The women dismembered Orpheus, throwing his
lyre and his head into the river Hebrus. The Muses gathered up his
limbs and buried them, and Orpheus went to the underworld to
spend eternity with Eurydice. Jupiter himself cast
the bard's lyre into the sky.
Star names
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●
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Vega/ Alpha Lyrae
○ 5th brightest
○ Second star to be photographed
○ The falling Vulture
Sheliak/ Beta Lyrae
○ 2 star system
○ 1,000 light years away
○ 25,000 times more luminous than the sun
Sulafet/ Gamma Lyrae
○ 15 times larger than the sun
○ named for the Arabic word for turtle
Comparison of Vega to the Sun
Interesting Objects
This constellation contains:
- Vega (the fifth brightest star in the sky)
- The Central star V477 Lyrae
- The Planetary Nebula Messier 57 (Ring
Nebula)
- The merging triplet of galaxies NGC 6745
(an irregular spiral galaxy)
- The Open Cluster NGC 6791