Preview. This is a sample dedication, shown so you can see what a dedicated star page looks like.
A dedicated star
Albaldah
yellow-white · Sagittarius · π Sgr
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, Albaldah becomes available again. Want it? Put the date in your calendar.
Albaldah at a glance
- Constellation
- Sagittarius
- Other name
- π Sgr
- Catalogue number
- HIP 94141
- Distance
- ≈ 510 light-years
- Brightness
- Magnitude 2.88 naked-eye
- Star type
- F2II/III
- Colour
- yellow-white
- Best seen from
- Almost everywhere on Earth
- Right ascension
- 19h 09m 46s
- Declination
- −21° 01′ 25″
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 Albaldah?
Albaldah is a yellow-white giant. Its surface runs about 6,000 to 7,500°C, a shade hotter than the Sun. 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. A yellow-white star still in the steady part of its life would burn for two to four thousand million 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.
Albaldah drifts about 3.7 arcseconds a century against the stars behind it. Slow by any human measure, and still enough that the sky your distant descendants see will not be the one in your photographs.
The light you are looking at is old
Albaldah is about 510 light years away, so the light reaching you now set out around 1516. You are not looking at the star as it is. You are looking at the star as it was, and there is no way to see it any other way.
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 Albaldah mean?
The system bore the traditional name Albaldah, which comes from the Arabic بلدة bálda 'the town'.
In the catalogue of stars in the Calendarium of Al Achsasi al Mouakket, this star was designated Nir al Beldat, which was translated into Latin as Lucida Oppidi, meaning 'the brightest of the town'.
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 Albaldah?
It sits 21° south of the celestial equator, so it clears the horizon everywhere short of latitude 69°N, in practice, every inhabited latitude on Earth. It passes directly overhead at latitude 21°S. It stands highest at midnight in July, so July and August evenings are the best time to look. At magnitude 2.88 it is an easy naked-eye star from any reasonably dark spot.
Albaldah belongs to Sagittarius.
What does Albaldah mean in astrology?
The classical fixed-star tradition: Ptolemy, the medieval Behenian lists, Robson’s 1923 compilation. Is silent on Albaldah, 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, Albaldah stands at 16° Capricorn at the J2000 epoch, and the Sun passes that degree around 4 January 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 Albaldah
- What does Albaldah mean in astrology?
- The classical fixed-star tradition has no documented meaning for Albaldah. Projected onto the zodiac, Albaldah stands at 16° Capricorn, and the Sun passes that degree each year around 4 January.
- Is Albaldah the brightest star?
- Albaldah shines at magnitude 2.88 · visible to the naked eye on a clear night, one of the few thousand stars with an officially recognised name.
- How far away is Albaldah?
- Albaldah is approximately 510 light-years from Earth. The light reaching us tonight began its journey around 510 years ago.
- Which constellation contains Albaldah?
- Albaldah is part of Sagittarius.
- Can everyone see Albaldah?
- It sits 21° south of the celestial equator, so it clears the horizon everywhere short of latitude 69°N, in practice, every inhabited latitude on Earth. It passes directly overhead at latitude 21°S. It stands highest at midnight in July, so July and August evenings are the best time to look. At magnitude 2.88 it is an easy naked-eye star from any reasonably dark spot.
- Is dedicating Albaldah an official astronomical renaming?
- No. Albaldah 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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