Week of May 24-30, 2009 by Dennis Mammana on Creators.com

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Week of May 24-30, 2009

I've read a lot of astronomy books over my career.

A lot!

Amazingly, my favorite of all isn't even a book about astronomy. It's the inspirational and romantic autobiography of the late amateur astronomer and comet-discoverer-extraordinaire Leslie Peltier.

In his marvelous "Starlight Nights," Peltier wrote ever so eloquently of his passion for stargazing and how, as a wide-eyed child many years ago, he had learned about his very first star:

"According to the descriptive text, Vega, at that very hour in the month of May, would be rising in the northeastern sky. I took the open book outside, walked around to the east side of the house, glanced once more at the diagram by the light that came through the east window of the kitchen, looked up toward the northeast and there, just above the plum tree blooming by the well, was Vega. And there she had been every springtime of my life, circling around the pole with her five attendant stars, fairly begging for attention, and I had never seen her.

"Now I knew a star!"

The same star that inspired Peltier's young imagination is still there, glistening in the northeastern sky during May evenings, waiting to inspire us too.

And, just like Peltier, all we've got to do is go outdoors and look up.

Vega is the brightest star in the tiny constellation of Lyra, the Harp. Gaze at it and you'll be looking roughly in the direction that our sun and solar system are racing at about 12 miles per second. No need to worry about a collision, though. Vega lies 25 light years away, about 150 trillion miles. Nearly 4,000 centuries will pass during our journey.

This brilliant white star is about three times larger and more massive than our sun, and produces 50 times more power. As a result, it will exhaust its fuel in only one-tenth the time — making its expected life span only about 1 billion years.

And, because of the 25,800-year wobble of the Earth's axis, Vega will become our North Star about 12,000 years from now.

Vega is such an amazing star in many ways. If, for one reason or another, you've been putting off getting outdoors to learn the stars, take a page out of Peltier's book this spring. Step outside and begin with Vega!

To find out more about Dennis Mammana and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.