Preview. This is a sample dedication, shown so you can see what a dedicated star page looks like.
A dedicated star
Aldulfin
blue-white · Delphinus · ε Del
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, Aldulfin becomes available again. Want it? Put the date in your calendar.
Aldulfin at a glance
- Constellation
- Delphinus
- Other name
- ε Del
- Catalogue number
- HIP 101421
- Distance
- ≈ 330 light-years
- Brightness
- Magnitude 4.03 naked-eye
- Star type
- B6III
- Colour
- blue-white
- Best seen from
- Almost everywhere on Earth
- Right ascension
- 20h 33m 13s
- Declination
- +11° 18′ 12″
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 Aldulfin?
Aldulfin is a blue-white giant. Its surface runs somewhere between 10,000 and 30,000°C, which is what gives it a blue-white cast. 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 blue-white star still in the steady part of its life would burn for tens 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.
Aldulfin drifts about 3.0 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
The light arriving from Aldulfin tonight left in about 1696, some 330 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 Aldulfin mean?
The star bore the traditional Arabic name ðanab ad-dulfīn or Dzaneb al Delphin, which appeared in the catalogue of stars in the Calendarium of Al Achsasi Al Mouakket and which was translated into Latin as Cauda Delphini, meaning 'the dolphin's tail.
From this Chinese name, the name Pae Chaou was formed.
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 Aldulfin?
It sits 11° north of the celestial equator, so it clears the horizon everywhere short of latitude 79°S, in practice, every inhabited latitude on Earth. It passes directly overhead at latitude 11°N. It stands highest at midnight in July, so July and August evenings are the best time to look. At magnitude 4.03 it is a naked-eye star only under a dark sky, binoculars make it certain.
Aldulfin belongs to Delphinus.
What does Aldulfin mean in astrology?
The classical fixed-star tradition: Ptolemy, the medieval Behenian lists, Robson’s 1923 compilation. Is silent on Aldulfin, 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, Aldulfin stands at 14° Aquarius at the J2000 epoch, and the Sun passes that degree around 2 February 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 Aldulfin
- What does Aldulfin mean in astrology?
- The classical fixed-star tradition has no documented meaning for Aldulfin. Projected onto the zodiac, Aldulfin stands at 14° Aquarius, and the Sun passes that degree each year around 2 February.
- Is Aldulfin the brightest star?
- Aldulfin shines at magnitude 4.03 · visible to the naked eye on a clear night, one of the few thousand stars with an officially recognised name.
- How far away is Aldulfin?
- Aldulfin is approximately 330 light-years from Earth. The light reaching us tonight began its journey around 330 years ago.
- Which constellation contains Aldulfin?
- Aldulfin is part of Delphinus.
- Can everyone see Aldulfin?
- It sits 11° north of the celestial equator, so it clears the horizon everywhere short of latitude 79°S, in practice, every inhabited latitude on Earth. It passes directly overhead at latitude 11°N. It stands highest at midnight in July, so July and August evenings are the best time to look. At magnitude 4.03 it is a naked-eye star only under a dark sky, binoculars make it certain.
- Is dedicating Aldulfin an official astronomical renaming?
- No. Aldulfin 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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