Vega in Fiction - The Star Vega

The Star Vega

Vega (Alpha Lyrae) is a blue-white star in the constellation Lyra (the lyre, see High Sierra, below) that is frequently featured in works of science fiction. Like its bright cousins Sirius, Deneb, and Altair, it is classified as a star of spectral type A. Roughly two and a half times the size of the Sun (see size comparison, left), it is 40 times as luminous and, together with Arcturus and Sirius, one of the most radiant stars in our galactic neighborhood. Its luminosity joins with its relative proximity to the Earth—it is only 25 light-years away—to make it the fifth brightest star in the night sky (see French and English Tragedy by George Croly, below). Vega is rendered decidedly oblate by its rapid rate of rotation, and since it is pole-on to the Sun, it appears significantly larger to earthbound observers than it actually is.

For this and a variety of other reasons Vega has been extensively studied by astronomers, leading it to be termed "arguably the next most important star in the sky after the Sun."

Based on an observed excess emission of infrared radiation, Vega appears to have a circumstellar disk of dust. This dust is likely to be the result of massive collisions between objects in an orbiting debris belt (see The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester, below, and graphic, right), and it is analogous to the Kuiper belt in the Solar System. Irregularities in the disk also suggest the presence of at least one planet, about the size of Jupiter, in an orbit large enough to allow the formation of smaller rocky planets closer to the star (see Demon Princes by Jack Vance, Hyperion by Dan Simmons, and Babylon 5 below). Regardless of its ultimate tally of planetary companions, the fact that it has an estimated age of just 455 million years suggests that the Vega system is too young to have fostered the development of life or a complex biosphere on any of its worlds.

During the summer evenings of mid-northern latitudes, an observer can readily see Vega near the zenith (see High Sierra, below). It lies at one vertex of a far-flung asterism called the Summer Triangle, which consists of the zero-magnitude stars Vega in the constellation Lyra and Altair in Aquila, plus the first magnitude star Deneb in Cygnus. This formation is the approximate shape of a right triangle, with Vega located at the right angle. The Summer Triangle is quite recognizable in northern skies as there are few other bright stars in its vicinity.

The name Wega (later Vega) comes from a loose transliteration of the Arabic word wāqi‘ meaning "falling" or "landing," via the phrase an-nasr al-wāqi‘, "the falling eagle." The star figures prominently in the mythology of cultures as diverse as the Polynesian, ancient Greek, Roman, Chinese (see Qi Xi below), Persian, and Hindu.