Away from city lights, a moonless July sky displays about 2,500 naked-eye stars. With so many luminaries, how hard is it to select one standout to feature on this page? It’s a piece of cake. Most stars are dim, and most are cursed with monikers like HDE224334 or Zubeneschamali. Only a handful are brilliant and have popular names. Of those, just one floats overhead during the summer. So it’s automatic: Vega selects itself.
From most of the Northern Hemisphere, it appears as the third brightest star in the sky, and it boasts the shortest and one of the most familiar names. (Nonetheless, its name is mispronounced routinely. That’s because few know this phonetics tip: star names should be pronounced as they’re spelled.
Rigel is really RYE-gel and Vega is really VEE-guh. No need to add a Latin twist with VAY-guh and make it into a cigar.)
Look straight up at ...
