Vega is the brightest star in the northern constellation of Lyra. It has the Bayer designation α Lyrae, Latinised to Alpha Lyrae and abbreviated Alpha Lyr or α Lyr; this star is close at only 25 light-years from the Sun, together with Arcturus and Sirius, one of the most luminous stars in the Sun's neighborhood. It is the fifth-brightest star in the night sky, the second-brightest star in the northern celestial hemisphere, after Arcturus. Vega has been extensively studied by astronomers, leading it to be termed “arguably the next most important star in the sky after the Sun”. Vega was the northern pole star around 12,000 BC and will be so again around the year 13,727, when the declination will be +86°14'. Vega was the first star other than the Sun to be photographed and the first to have its spectrum recorded, it was one of the first stars. Vega has functioned as the baseline for calibrating the photometric brightness scale and was one of the stars used to define the zero point for the UBV photometric system.
Vega is only about a tenth of the age of the Sun, but since it is 2.1 times as massive, its expected lifetime is one tenth of that of the Sun. Vega has an unusually low abundance of the elements with a higher atomic number than that of helium. Vega is a variable star that varies in brightness, it is rotating with a velocity of 236 km/s at the equator. This causes the equator to bulge outward due to centrifugal effects, and, as a result, there is a variation of temperature across the star's photosphere that reaches a maximum at the poles. From Earth, Vega is observed from the direction of one of these poles. Based on an observed excess emission of infrared radiation, Vega appears to have a circumstellar disk of dust; this dust is to be the result of collisions between objects in an orbiting debris disk, analogous to the Kuiper belt in the Solar System. Stars that display an infrared excess due to dust emission are termed Vega-like stars. Α Lyrae is the star's Bayer designation. The traditional name Vega comes from a loose transliteration of the Arabic word wāqi‘ meaning "falling" or "landing", via the phrase an-nasr al-wāqi‘, "the falling eagle".
In 2016, the International Astronomical Union organized a Working Group on Star Names to catalog and standardize proper names for stars. The WGSN's first bulletin of July 2016 included a table of the first two batches of names approved by the WGSN, it is now so entered in the IAU Catalog of Star Names. Vega can be seen near the zenith in the mid-northern latitudes during the evening in the Northern Hemisphere summer. From mid-southern latitudes, it can be seen low above the northern horizon during the Southern Hemisphere winter. With a declination of +38.78°, Vega can only be viewed at latitudes north of 51° S. Therefore, it does not rise at all anywhere in Antarctica or in the southernmost part of South America, including Punta Arenas, Chile. At latitudes to the north of +51° N, Vega remains continuously above the horizon as a circumpolar star. Around July 1, Vega reaches midnight culmination; each night the positions of the stars appear to change as the Earth rotates. However, when a star is located along the Earth's axis of rotation, it will remain in the same position and thus is called a pole star.
The direction of the Earth's axis of rotation changes over time in a process known as the precession of the equinoxes. A complete precession cycle requires 25,770 years, during which time the pole of the Earth's rotation follows a circular path across the celestial sphere that passes near several prominent stars. At present the pole star is Polaris, but around 12,000 BC the pole was pointed only five degrees away from Vega. Through precession, the pole will again pass near Vega around AD 14,000. Vega is the brightest of the successive northern pole stars; this star lies at a vertex of a spaced asterism called the Summer Triangle, which consists of Vega plus the two first-magnitude stars Altair, in Aquila, Deneb in Cygnus. This formation is the approximate shape of a right triangle, with Vega located at its right angle; the Summer Triangle is recognizable in the northern skies for there are few other bright stars in its vicinity. Astrophotography, the photography of celestial objects, began in 1840 when John William Draper took an image of the Moon using the daguerreotype process.
On July 17, 1850, Vega became the first star to be photographed, when it was imaged by William Bond and John Adams Whipple at the Harvard College Observatory with a daguerreotype. Henry Draper took the first photograph of a star's spectrum in August 1872 when he took an image of Vega, he became the first person to show absorption lines in the spectrum of a star. Similar lines had been identified in the spectrum of the Sun. In 1879, William Huggins used photographs of the spectra of Vega and similar stars to identify a set of twelve "very strong lines" that were common to this stellar category; these were identified as lines from the Hydrogen Balmer series. Since 1943, the spectrum of this star has served as one of the stable anchor points by which other stars are classified; the distance to Vega can be determined by measuring its parallax shift against the background stars as the Earth orbits the Sun. The first person to publish a star's parallax was Friedrich G. W. von Struve, when he announced a value of 0.125 arcseconds for Vega.
Friedrich Bessel was skeptical about Struve's data, when Bessel published a parallax of 0.314″ for the star syst
Megasoma anubis is a species of beetles belonging to the family Scarabaeidae. Megasoma anubis can reach a length of about 90 millimetres; these large and heavy beetles are black but they have a soft, velvety surface, as they are densely covered with a yellowish-grey dust. Males have a medium length and curved horn on the head. On pronotum there is a short median horn. Females lack horns; the legs are long with sharp claws. These beetles are considered a pest; the larvae develop in 1 -- 2 years. They feed on the inflorescence of the Chinese fan palm. Adults feed on rotting fruits and can be found from January to April; this species has a Neotropical distribution. Reitter, E. 1960. Beetles. G. P. Putnam’s Sons, New York, NY. Castelnau F. Histoire Naturelle des Insectes Coléoptères. Avec une introduction renfermant L'Anatomie et la Physiologie des Animaux Articulés, par M. Brullé, P. Duménil. Paris 2:1-564 Gory H. L. Tetralobus et Scarabaeus nouveaux, Annales de la Société Entomologique de France 5:513-515 Chevrolat A. Guérin-Méneville F.
E. Magazine Zoologie Plates 139-140
Fort Binġemma is a polygonal fort in the limits of Rabat, Malta. It was built between 1878 by the British as part of the Victoria Lines; the fort has been illegally occupied by the Buttigieg family since 2009, who use it as a restaurant. It is set on a hill of around 590 feet above sea level. Previous to the building of the fort there used to be village. Fort Binġemma was built by the British as part of the Victoria Lines, a line of fortifications along the northern part of Malta, dividing it from the more populated south, it is one of three forts built along the other two being Fort Madalena and Fort Mosta. Fort Binġemma is located at the western extremity of the line, it was first of the forts to be built, with construction taking place between 1875 and 1878, it has an irregular shape, is protected by a cliff face to the north and a ditch to the south. It was armed with two 6-inch and one 9.2-inch breech-loading guns which had an arc of fire of 210 degrees, commanding the sea to the northwest and the ridges to the northeast.
Although the Victoria Lines were abandoned in 1907, Fort Binġemma, along with Fort Madalena, remained in use for coastal defence. From 1949 to about 1952, the fort was used to train Albanian insurgents fighting the communist regime in the Albanian Subversion, it became a communications centre for the 235 Signal Squadron. In 1981, the Government of Malta leased the fort to Gaetano Buttigieg for use as a pig farm; the lease expired in 1997, but it continued to be renewed annually until 2009. After the expiry of the lease and his family continued to occupy the fort illegally, despite the government having the right to evict them. In 2011, he refused to let government officials enter the fort, guarded by an iron gate and dogs. Illegal development took place within the fort in 2013. In 2015, it was revealed that the fort was being used as a restaurant, illegal, it is used for cows and animal farming