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Vulpecula, the Fox, is a faint northernIn astronomy and navigation, the celestial sphere is an imaginary rotating sphere of "gigantic radius", concentric with the Earth. All objects in the sky can be thought of as lying upon the sphere. Projected, from their corresponding terran equivalents, a constellationOrion is a remarkable constellation, visible from most places on the globe (but not always the whole year long). A constellation is a group of stars visibly related to each other in a particular configuration. In three-dimensional space, most of the stars located in the middle of the Summer TriangleThe Summer Triangle is an astronomical asterism involving an imaginary triangle drawn on the northern hemisphere's celestial sphere, with its defining vertices at Altair, Deneb, and Vega. This triangle connects the constellations of Aquila, Cygnus, and Ly, an asterism consisting of the stars DenebDeneb (also known as Alpha Cygni is the brightest star in the Cygnus constellation despite being at least thirty times more distant than the others. It is or has been known by a number of other names, including Arided Aridif HR 7924 and HD 197345 . At an, VegaThis article is about Vega, the star. For other uses: see Vega (disambiguation Vega Alpha Lyrae is the lead star in the constellation Lyra, reaching near directly overhead in the mid-northern latitudes, during the Northern Hemisphere summer. It is a "near and AltairAltair (α Aquilae) is a star in the Aquila constellation. It is a white star of visual magnitude 0. 77, the twelfth brightest star in the skies. It is a vertex of the Summer Triangle. Located 17 light years away from Earth, it is one of the closest.

1 Notable features

There are no stars brighter than 4th magnitude in this constellation. The least faint one is Anser (α Vul), a red giantAccording to the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram, a red giant is a large non- main sequence star of stellar classification K or M; so-named because of the reddish appearance of the cooler "giants". Examples include Aldebaran and Arcturus. They are believed to ( spectral type M0 III) at a distance of 297 light-years with an apparent magnitude of 4.44. Anser is an optical binary (separation of 413.7") that can be split using binoculars. The second star is 8 Vul.

In 1967, the first pulsar, PSR 1919+21, was discovered in this little constellation by Antony Hewish and Jocelyn Bell, in Cambridge. While they were searching for scintillation of radio signals of quasars, they found a very regular signal consisting of pulses of radiation at a rate of one in every few seconds. Terrestrial origin of the signal was ruled out because the time it took the object to reappear was a sidereal day instead of a solar day. This anomaly was finally identified as the signal of a fast rotating neutron star. The pulses came (and still come) every 1.3373 seconds - too regular to be associated with any other object. This new object was called CP 19191 for "Cambridge Pulsar near RA 19h 19m" and is nowadays called PSR 1919+21 for "PulSaR at RA 19h 19m and DECL +21 degrees".