Vega is a main sequence star located 25.3 light years away in the constellation of Lyra and is the fifth brightest star in the night sky. At around 386 to 511 million years old Vega is still quite a young star, but with a mass twice that of the Sun and it’s fast burning fusion process it is using fuel up at a far quicker rate. This means that Vega only has a main sequence shelf life one tenth that of our Sun which translates to a main sequence life span of around 1 billion years after which it will become a class M red giant.
One of the most intriguing things about Vega is it’s excessive emission of infrared radiation which when measured points to a large quantity of circumstellar dust in orbit around the star. Analogous to the Kupier belt in our own Solar System, this dust lies about 120 astronomical units beyond Vega and is probably the result of objects colliding with one another in a relatively young debris disk.
Perturbations in this debris disk also provide tantalizing evidence that implies the existence of a Jupiter mass planet in orbit around Vega, although one is as yet to be formally observed. Perhaps in the future an extrasolar planet can be visually observed and imaged around Vega in much the same way that extrasolar planets were seen orbiting the stars Fomalhaut and HR 8799.
The concept image above is another of my Photoshop renders that draws inspiration from the mysterious Vega ’system’. It was interesting to create something slightly different from what I have previously produced and I hope you enjoy what I have visualized as much as I enjoyed working on it.
