The best way to learn all the stars is to focus on a particular group and learn them one at a time.
Vega is the brightest star in the constellation. It is my favorite star, not because Carl Sagan
used it for his novel "Contact', but because it is at the zenith at midnight around my birthday in July. It is part
of the summer triangle with Deneb and Altair. Vega is close, only 8 parsecs away, which means every six months, it appears
to move one eighth of a second of arc in the sky against the background of farther stars.
Sheliak, beta Lyrae, and delta Lyrae are the farthest in the constellation, some about 245 pc away.
Sheliak and Sulaphat mean tortoise in Persian and Arabic, respectively. Sheliak appears to be a binary pair, which may
explain its light variations.
Epsilon Lyrae is a double double star of two close binaries. Binoculars will separate them;
a telescope will split them into four.
The Ring Nebula appears between Sulaphat and Sheliak. M57 is a planetary nebular, which is
an expanding sphere of gas.
