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SkyTour - Lyra - The Lyre

Planets Aquila

Right next to Cygnus is the small but easily found Lyra. Lyra is made up of a very bright star Vega that lies near a small parallelogram formed by four stars.

Vega is a blue-white star that is only about 26 light-years from our Solar System. The position of the Polar Star changes over the years largely because the Earth's axis wobbles and Vega will be the new Polar Star in about 11,000 years instead of the very dim tail of Ursa Minor.

According to legend, Lyra was created by Hermes (Mercury) and then given to Apollo.

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