A dedicated star
Aldebaran
warm orange · Taurus · α Tau
Dedicated to
Rina Wijaya
by Maya Santoso · August 10, 2026
“Untuk Rina, sahabat yang kebaikannya tetap hidup dalam setiap kenangan. Semoga cahaya Aldebaran selalu mengingatkan kami kepadamu.”
This dedication
- Dedicated to
- Rina Wijaya
- Dedicated by
- Maya Santoso
- Recorded
- August 10, 2026
- Held until
- August 10, 2027
When this dedication ends, Aldebaran becomes available again. Want it? Put the date in your calendar.
Aldebaran at a glance
- Constellation
- Taurus
- Other name
- α Tau
- Catalogue number
- HIP 21421
- Distance
- ≈ 65 light-years
- Brightness
- Magnitude 0.85 naked-eye
- Star type
- K5 III
- Colour
- warm orange
- Best seen from
- Almost everywhere on Earth
- Right ascension
- 04h 35m 55s
- Declination
- +16° 30′ 33″
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 Aldebaran?
Aldebaran 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 you can see from Aldebaran left in 1961, which puts it roughly a lifetime ago. Nobody has invented anything since then that the light knows about; it has simply been travelling.
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 also one of the brighter stars in the sky, which is why it carries a proper name at all rather than a catalogue number.
What does the name Aldebaran mean?
Aldebaran is Arabic, al-dabarān, “the follower”, because it rises after the Pleiades cluster and follows it across the sky all night.
Where can you see Aldebaran?
It sits 17° north of the celestial equator, so it clears the horizon everywhere short of latitude 73°S, in practice, every inhabited latitude on Earth. It passes directly overhead at latitude 17°N. It stands highest at midnight in November, so November and December evenings are the best time to look. At magnitude 0.85 it is bright enough to hold its own over city lights.
Aldebaran belongs to Taurus, where it is the brightest star.
What does Aldebaran mean in astrology?
The "eye of the Bull" and a Persian royal star, watcher of the east. Nature of Mars: courage, public honours and the drive to lead: held in the tradition to demand integrity, with the gains lost when it lapses.
Projected onto the zodiac the way fixed-star astrology reads any star, Aldebaran stands at 9° Gemini at the J2000 epoch, and the Sun passes that degree around 30 May 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 Aldebaran
- What does Aldebaran mean in astrology?
- The "eye of the Bull" and a Persian royal star, watcher of the east. Nature of Mars: courage, public honours and the drive to lead: held in the tradition to demand integrity, with the gains lost when it lapses. Projected onto the zodiac, Aldebaran stands at 9° Gemini, and the Sun passes that degree each year around 30 May.
- Is Aldebaran the brightest star?
- Aldebaran shines at magnitude 0.85 · visible to the naked eye on a clear night, one of the few thousand stars with an officially recognised name.
- How far away is Aldebaran?
- Aldebaran is approximately 65 light-years from Earth. The light reaching us tonight began its journey around 65 years ago.
- Which constellation contains Aldebaran?
- Aldebaran is the brightest star in Taurus.
- Can everyone see Aldebaran?
- It sits 17° north of the celestial equator, so it clears the horizon everywhere short of latitude 73°S, in practice, every inhabited latitude on Earth. It passes directly overhead at latitude 17°N. It stands highest at midnight in November, so November and December evenings are the best time to look. At magnitude 0.85 it is bright enough to hold its own over city lights.
- Is dedicating Aldebaran an official astronomical renaming?
- No. Aldebaran 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.
Explore nearby stars
