Have you heard of Vega? Well, it is the next North Star. But you probably won’t see it within your lifetime. When you imagine a star, you probably imagine a bright, hot, round celestial body that is very big. But Vega doesn’t satisfy the roundness! It’s squashed! But why is it squashed you may ask? Vega is squashed because of its very fast rotation speed. It rotates once every 12 and a half hours. Because of this, stellar material gets thrown around the equator. But when you look at Vega from Earth, you don’t need its oblate shape to tell it is squashed. When material is further from the center of the star, there is less gravity. Which causes the stellar material to cool and darken. This is called gravity darkening. From Earth, it looks round, but it has a dark halo which shows it has a cooler equator in turn showing it has a squashed shape. Well, that's the interesting fact. Now here are the stats.
Age: 455.3 millions years (very young)
Mass: 2.1 solar masses
Distance away: 25 light years (Not too far)
Well that is all for now. Stay tuned for the next blog!
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