Posts Tagged ‘road signs’

Vega Next 3 Exits

Oops…  I must’ve taken a wrong turn at Arcturus…

Vega Next 3 Exits

From the Wikipedia entry on Vega:

Vega is the bright­est star in the con­stel­la­tion Lyra, the fifth bright­est star in the night sky and the sec­ond bright­est star in the north­ern celes­tial hemi­sphere, after Arc­turus.  It is a rel­a­tively nearby star at only 25.3 light-years from Earth, and, together with Arc­turus and Sir­ius, one of the most lumi­nous stars in the Sun’s neigh­bor­hood.

Vega has been exten­sively stud­ied by astronomers, lead­ing it to be termed, “arguably the next most impor­tant star in the sky after the Sun”.[8] His­tor­i­cally, Vega served as the north­ern pole star at about 12,000 BCE and will do so again at around 14,000 CE. Vega was the first star, other than the Sun, to have its pho­to­graph taken and the first to have its spec­trum pho­tographed. It was also one of the first stars to have its dis­tance esti­mated through par­al­lax measurements.

Also:   Vega became the first star to have a car named after it when Chevro­let launched the Vega in 1971.