Vega Variable Star Discovery: What TESS and Webb Reveal About the Star’s Secrets
If you live in the Northern Hemisphere and step outside on a clear July evening, look up—you’ll spot Vega, one of the brightest stars in the night sky, shining almost directly overhead.
Vega isn’t just bright—it’s also one of the most studied stars by astronomers. Located in the small Greek constellation Lyra (the Harp), Vega stands out as the brightest star in that constellation.
What makes Vega even more fascinating is its position in the sky. It forms one corner of the well-known “Summer Triangle” asterism, along with Deneb and Altair. This makes Vega easy to find, even for beginner stargazers.
But Vega’s significance goes far beyond its brightness.
Vega: The Former and Future North Star
Around 14,000 years ago, ancient humans likely knew Vega as the North Star—the point in the sky around which all other stars appeared to rotate. That’s because of a phenomenon known as axial precession—the slow, wobbling change in the direction of Earth’s rotational axis over time.
Today, Polaris holds the title of the North Star. But in about 12,000 years, Vega will once again become the North Star, completing a grand celestial cycle.
Vega: A Benchmark Star with a Shifting Glow
Vega, one of the brightest stars in the night sky, has been studied closely since the early days of modern astronomy. It even helped set the foundation for the magnitude scale, the system astronomers still use today to classify a star’s brightness.
Vega shares an interesting trait with Polaris—both are not only past and future pole stars, but also classified as variable stars. This means their brightness changes slightly over time.
The reasons for this variation can differ. Sometimes, dust, orbiting planets, or companion stars can block part of the light we see from Earth. In other cases, the star itself might be unstable. Features like sunspots, surface eruptions, or the star’s natural expansion and contraction can cause its light to fluctuate.
Since these stars are so far away, we can’t directly observe their surfaces. Instead, astronomers detect these brightness changes by monitoring the light they emit over time.
TESS and Webb Uncover New Mysteries About Vega and Variable Stars
NASA’s TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) is equipped with ultra-sensitive light sensors designed to detect the tiny dips in starlight caused by transiting exoplanets. But TESS has proven useful for more than just planet hunting. Its precision also allowed astronomers to observe incredibly subtle pulsations in a specific class of variable stars known as Delta Scuti stars—much fainter than anything previously recorded.
These new observations are helping scientists better model the complex internal structure of Delta Scuti stars and understand the causes behind their unique, often chaotic brightness variations. This research marks a significant advancement in astroseismology, the field that studies the inner workings of stars by analyzing how sound waves move through them—like listening to the “song” of a star.
One exciting aspect of this study is its potential to resolve ongoing debates about Vega’s classification as a variable star. For a more interactive experience, the research team has even released a sonification demo, allowing you to “hear” the stellar pulses like a heartbeat. You can explore the findings and listen to the demo at: bit.ly/DeltaScutiTESS
In a separate breakthrough, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) revisited the Vega system in 2024. It revealed a massive debris disk—spanning approximately 100 billion miles—surrounding the star. Although the presence of this dusty disk is confirmed, no planets have been detected in the system so far.
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