Vega

Brightest star in the constellation Lyra and the fifth-brightest star in the night sky. It is a blue-white star, about 25 light years from the Sun, with a true luminosity 50 times that of the Sun.

In 1983 the Infrared Astronomy Satellite (IRAS) discovered a ring of dust around Vega, possibly a disc from which a planetary system is forming.

As a result of precession (the slow wobble of the Earth on its axis), Vega will become the north polar star about AD 14,000. The name Vega is from Arabic indicating the eagle depicted as carrying the lyre. First-magnitude Vega was the first star to be photographed (Bond and Whipple, 1850) and to have its spectrum recorded photographically (Draper, 1872).

Vega

Pair of Soviet space probes launched towards Venus in December 1984 that later visited Halley's Comet.

On passing Venus in June 1985 both spacecraft released landing modules. During the descent, each lander then released a 3.4-m/11-ft sounding balloon that floated at a height of 54 km/34 ft in the atmosphere of Venus, travelling 11,000 km/6,800 mi in two days. Precise tracking of the two balloons by radio telescopes on Earth (using very long-baseline interferometry to obtain high-resolution images) allowed astronomers to study the atmospheric circulation of Venus. In March 1986, the two Vega probes passed within 9,000 km/5,600 mi of the nucleus of Halley's Comet.