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A dedicated star
Al Tarf
warm orange · Cancer · β Cnc
Dedicated to
Maya
by Her sister, June · August 12, 2026
“You were born on the brightest night of my life. Whenever you feel small, remember: there is a star that has carried your name since before you could read it, and it is still up there, still burning, still yours.”
This dedication
- Dedicated to
- Maya
- Dedicated by
- Her sister, June
- Recorded
- August 12, 2026
- Held until
- August 12, 2027
When this dedication ends, Al Tarf becomes available again. Want it? Put the date in your calendar.
Al Tarf at a glance
- Constellation
- Cancer
- Other name
- β Cnc
- Catalogue number
- HIP 40526
- Distance
- ≈ 290 light-years
- Brightness
- Magnitude 3.53 naked-eye
- Star type
- K4 III
- Colour
- warm orange
- Best seen from
- Almost everywhere on Earth
- Right ascension
- 08h 16m 30s
- Declination
- +09° 11′ 08″
J2000 catalogue coordinates that can be independently cross-checked against astronomical databases. A planetarium app showing coordinates of date will differ slightly, because proper motion and precession move a star’s apparent position over time.
What kind of star is Al Tarf?
Al Tarf is an orange giant. Its surface runs roughly 4,000 to 5,000°C, cool enough that the light carries a visible orange. Colour in a star is a temperature reading rather than a decoration: the hot ones are blue and the cool ones red, the opposite way round to a kitchen tap.
Its colour is not the whole story. An orange star still in the steady part of its life would burn for tens of thousands of millions of years. This one is past that stage, and it is cool at the surface because it has swollen outward, not because it was born this way.
It is a giant, which is what a star becomes when it exhausts the hydrogen in its core. It has swollen outward and cooled at the surface, and it is now brighter than it ever was as a young star. The Sun will do this too, in about five thousand million years.
The light you are looking at is old
The light arriving from Al Tarf tonight left in about 1736, some 290 years ago. Everything that has happened since, every person you have heard of from the last few centuries, happened while it was in transit.
That delay is the part people find hardest and like most. A star is the one thing you can give someone that was already old before either of you was born and will outlast anything else you could have chosen.
It is comfortably visible without equipment on a decent night.
What does the name Al Tarf mean?
The star bore the traditional name of Al Tarf (anglicized as Altarf), which can be translated from the Arabic as "end" or "edge".
Name origin from English Wikipedia. AsterNym does not invent an etymology where none is recorded, and most stars in this catalogue have none: they carry modern names, or a catalogue designation and nothing older.
Where can you see Al Tarf?
It sits 9° north of the celestial equator, so it clears the horizon everywhere short of latitude 81°S, in practice, every inhabited latitude on Earth. It passes directly overhead at latitude 9°N. It stands highest at midnight in January, so January and February evenings are the best time to look. At magnitude 3.53 it is a naked-eye star only under a dark sky, binoculars make it certain.
Al Tarf belongs to Cancer, where it is the brightest star.
What does Al Tarf mean in astrology?
The classical fixed-star tradition: Ptolemy, the medieval Behenian lists, Robson’s 1923 compilation. Is silent on Al Tarf, and we don’t invent lore where none exists. What astrology can still read is the star’s real position, below.
Projected onto the zodiac the way fixed-star astrology reads any star, Al Tarf stands at 4° Leo at the J2000 epoch, and the Sun passes that degree around 24 July in the years around 2000. Fixed-star longitude shifts slowly against the tropical zodiac because of precession, about one degree every seventy-two years, so a natal conjunction must be calculated for the birth year rather than read off this J2000 value or a calendar date.
Traditional interpretations, not facts or predictions. The position and dates are computed.
Frequently asked questions about Al Tarf
- What does Al Tarf mean in astrology?
- The classical fixed-star tradition has no documented meaning for Al Tarf. Projected onto the zodiac, Al Tarf stands at 4° Leo, and the Sun passes that degree each year around 24 July.
- Is Al Tarf the brightest star?
- Al Tarf shines at magnitude 3.53 · visible to the naked eye on a clear night, one of the few thousand stars with an officially recognised name.
- How far away is Al Tarf?
- Al Tarf is approximately 290 light-years from Earth. The light reaching us tonight began its journey around 290 years ago.
- Which constellation contains Al Tarf?
- Al Tarf is the brightest star in Cancer.
- Can everyone see Al Tarf?
- It sits 9° north of the celestial equator, so it clears the horizon everywhere short of latitude 81°S, in practice, every inhabited latitude on Earth. It passes directly overhead at latitude 9°N. It stands highest at midnight in January, so January and February evenings are the best time to look. At magnitude 3.53 it is a naked-eye star only under a dark sky, binoculars make it certain.
- Is dedicating Al Tarf an official astronomical renaming?
- No. Al Tarf keeps its internationally recognised astronomical name. An AsterNym dedication records your personal name and message in the AsterNym registry without changing the star's scientific identity.
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