What is the brightest star in the constellation Lyra?

Vega, the fifth brightest star in the night sky, and it has been the reference point for a great deal of astronomy - the magnitude scale was originally calibrated so that Vega is zero, and it was the first star other than the Sun to be photographed, in 1850.

It was the pole star around 12,000 BC and will be again in about 12,000 years, as the Earth's axis completes its 26,000-year wobble. It is also spinning so fast - close to the speed at which it would break up - that it is visibly flattened, with the equator several hundred degrees cooler than the poles.

In 1983 an infrared satellite found Vega surrounded by a disc of dust, the first debris disc ever detected around another star - evidence of a planetary system in some stage of formation or collision. That discovery is what made Carl Sagan choose it as the source of the signal in Contact, and it remains one of the more closely watched stars for exactly the reason the novel used it.