Vega

Its story

Vega anchors the Summer Triangle, white and steady within Lyra —the lyre that, in myth, belonged to Orpheus and moved even the shades of Hades. Twelve thousand years ago it served as the northern pole star, and the slow precession of the equinoxes will return it to that throne in another fourteen thousand. In «Contact», Carl Sagan chose Vega as the source of humanity's first message from beyond: a fitting choice, for at 25 light-years it is almost a neighbour.