Lyra is a small constellation found between Hercules and Cygnus. It is best located by looking for the bright star Vega, which is one corner of the Summer Triangle. It represents the lyre (or harp) of the mythological harpist and singer, Orpheus. After his death, the king of the gods, Zeus, had his lyre placed in the sky by an eagle. Vega was for many years the standard star, having a magnitude of 0 and a colour (B-V) value of 0, and it was the first star to be photographed. It is a large, hot star which is roughly half-way through its short life, as it is 450 million years old. Vega is bright because it is one of the closest bright stars to us, being only 25 light years away.

The main object of interest in Lyra is Messier 57, the Ring Nebula. It is a planetary nebula which is about 7,000 years old, and about 2,500 light years distant. It is easily located roughly halfway between two fairly bright stars Sulafat and Sheliak, but it is both faint (magnitude 8.8) and small (about a tenth of the size of the full moon), so you need both a telescope and a high magnification to see it. In a telescope it is grey, like a tiny smoke ring. Lyra also contains a globular cluster, Messier 56, which is roughly halfway between Sulafat and Albireo in Cygnus, but it is faint (magnitude 8.3) and can be difficult to find.

Lyra contains the famous double-double star, Epsilon Lyrae. It gets its name because it is a very wide double of two fairly bright stars, each of which are very tight double stars. The double-double is easily located just to the left of Vega and is clearly a double, even in binoculars. However, to split these two stars comfortably, you will need a moderately large telescope and a high magnification.

The constellation also contains two archetype variable stars. Sheliak is a standard contact binary variable with a period of thirteen days, and the magnitude varies between 3.2 and 4.4. It involves the transfer of material from a normal star to its close neighbour, which is a red giant. The other archetype variable in Lyra, RR Lyrae, is more difficult to locate, but is roughly halfway between Vega and Deneb, on the same bearing as Vega to Epsilon Lyrae. It is an elderly red giant which is pulsating in its old age, and hence wobbles in magnitude from 7.1 to 8.1.