Loads in Lyra.

[cotterless45]

Vega is one of my summer alignment stars along with Arcturus.Just as it gets dark Vega ( The swooping eagle) will be over head and the 5th brightest star in the sky. The Sun's relative motion means that we're heading there at 20kms/sec.There's a lot to see;

Beta (Sheliak) is a blue/yellow double . It's an eclipsing binary variable with 2 massive elliptical stars pulling gas streams from the smaller.

Gamma ( Sulafat ) is the other double at the base with the Ring Nebula , M27 between them. Try a UHC filter,it'll stand out brightly.

Epsilon is the double double,find it by going from Vega towards Deneb.At x100 you'llsee the pair of bright doubles aligned at right angles to each other.

Delta is a wide double.

R; variable red giant ,mag.3.9-5.0

Towards Cygnus RR is one of the variables used to calculate star distance.It varies from 7.1 to 8.1 in 13.6 hours.

M56 is a quite small globular cluster,you won't get more out of it with higher magnification.

There's more to Lyra than M57.I find that it adds a bit of interest to find out a little about what you're seeing.

Nick.

[cotterless45]

many apologies; errors to above

The Ring is M57and the doubledouble is Epsilon Lyr.

Nick.

[since fixed, Michael]

[KevUU]

Thanks for that detail! I thought I'd done a pretty comprehensive visual study of Lyra the other night but I've just put some things from your post on my list to go and look at in more detail next time

Just to add my small contribution - I found out that the detail I enjoyed around the Delta Lyrae double is technically the Stephenson-1 Open Cluster (aka Delta Lyra Cluster).

(Also - and many apologies if I'm wrong on this - from what I've read I think the double double is in Epsilon Lyrae?)

[KevUU]

Sorry, mid-air collision re epsilon/eta

(that'll teach me to pause for food in the middle of writing a post)

[The Sailor]

An area of the sky I am enjoying these clear nights

Jim

[NGC 1502]

Also in Lyra is the double double's double !

Struve 2470 and 2474, are nice double stars that have an uncanny

resemblance to the much more famous double double, but are resolvable

at a low power.

Worth checking out in our summer skies.

Regards, Ed.

Edit - here's a link - http://bestdoubles.wordpress.com/2010/06/25/struve-2470-and-struve-2474-the-other-double-double-in-lyra/

[Macavity]

At least, within the confines of Lyra, I can guarantee accuracy of my "GoTo-ing"!

But DSOs aside, the sheer variety of stars therein? Doing a bit of

"spectroscopy" (learning) on [M4-Red] "Delta 2" Lyrae last night.

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

many apologies; errors to above

The Ring is M57and the doubledouble is Epsilon Lyr.

Nick.

Fixed that