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Lyra

(LYE-ruh)

The Lyre or Harp

Lyra was the musical instrument of Orpheus, the great musician of Greek mythology. Lyra lies between Hercules to the west and Cygnus the Swan to the east.

Visibility: At 8:00 p.m. Standard Time (9:00 p.m. Daylight Saving) the constellation Lyra can be seen low in the east in May. In the summer months it progressively rises, passing through the zenith in early September. It lies low in the northwest in October before setting in November.

What to look for: Lyra, the Lyre or Harp of Orpheus, is a small constellation with only one very bright star, Vega (Alpha Lyrae). The remaining stars are visible but somewhat faint. Vega is the bright corner of a triangle joined at the star Zeta Lyrae to a parallelogram representing the strings of the harp.

Epsilon Lyrae, the third corner of the triangle, is a close double star when seen through binoculars; each of the pair is itself a very close double star which can be separated at high power in a moderate-sized telescope. Amateur astronomers call it the Double-Double. Between Beta and Gamma Lyrae at the south end of the parallelogram is M57, the famous Ring Nebula, which is visible in an 8" telescope, appearing as a tiny smoke ring. Called a planetary nebula, this nebula is a shell of gas puffed off by a dying star, once much like our Sun before it exhausted the hydrogen that fueled its nuclear furnace. Midway between Gamma Lyrae and the moderately bright star Albireo (Beta Cygni) is M56, an often-overlooked globular cluster of stars.

Mythology: Lyra was the Lyre or Harp of Orpheus, the son of Apollo, Olympian God of Music and Light. Hermes (Mercury), the Messenger of the Gods, fashioned it from a tortoise shell and gave his invention to Apollo, who, in turn, gave the lyre to his gifted son. So beautiful was Orpheus' music he could charm both creatures and inanimate objects. 

When Orpheus' wife, Eurydice, died from the bite of a snake, he sought her in the Underworld, and charmed Hades (Pluto), ruler of that realm, into letting her return with him. The only condition was that he not look back before reaching the world of the living. As they hurried upward, Eurydice could not keep up with Orpheus. Panicking, he glanced back, only to see Eurydice slip back into the Underworld. Even Orpheus and his divine music could not win her back a second time.

Orpheus wandered the hills for years, playing sadly haunting music, pursued by women who desperately desired to fill the empty place in his life. Driven mad by his rejection, a mob of these women attempted to kill him. But their weapons refused to harm him as he played, until, screaming so loudly they drowned out his music, they were able to stab him to death. The lyre was then tossed into a river.

Zeus (Jupiter) saw the dreadful deed and sent a vulture to retrieve the lyre so it could be placed in the heavens as a memorial to Apollo's son.

A Deeper Look: Vega in Arabic means "the Plunging Vulture," the bird Zeus (the Romans' Jupiter) sent to retrieve Orpheus' Lyre after his death. It is one of three very bright stars, the others being Deneb in Cygnus the Swan and Altair in Aquila the Eagle, that make up the Summer Triangle, an asterism (a commonly known grouping of stars that is not an official constellation) that straddles the summer Milky Way.

In China, Vega is Tchi-niu, the Weaving Princess, daughter of the King of Heaven, and Altair is Kien-niou, the King's Cowherd. They fell in love, married, and neglected their jobs. The king banished them to opposite sides of the Celestial River, the Milky Way, to restore order. On the seventh night of the seventh month of each year, all the magpies in China gather to form a magical bridge with their wings across the river, allowing the lovers to unite for that one night.

The seventh day of the seventh month of the Chinese lunar year is the night when the First Quarter Moon is approaching the Milky Way, hiding the latter in its glare, permitting the lovers to meet secretly under cover of moonlight.