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A dedicated star
Alya
white · Serpens · θ1 Ser
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, Alya becomes available again. Want it? Put the date in your calendar.
Alya at a glance
- Constellation
- Serpens
- Other name
- θ1 Ser
- Catalogue number
- HIP 92946
- Distance
- ≈ 155 light-years
- Brightness
- Magnitude 4.62 naked-eye
- Star type
- A5V
- Colour
- white
- Best seen from
- Almost everywhere on Earth
- Right ascension
- 18h 56m 13s
- Declination
- +04° 12′ 13″
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 Alya?
Alya is a white main-sequence star. Its surface runs around 7,500 to 10,000°C, hot enough to look white or blue-white to the eye. 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.
These are the classic bright white stars. Sirius and Vega are both this kind, and they are the reason people describe stars as white when most of the galaxy's stars are actually red and too faint to see.
A star of this class gets roughly a thousand million years, a tenth of what the Sun gets.
It is a main-sequence star, which despite the word dwarf simply means it is in the long stable middle of its life, fusing hydrogen in its core exactly as the Sun is doing now.
Alya drifts about 4.6 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 Alya tonight left in about 1871, some 155 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.
Where can you see Alya?
It sits 4° north of the celestial equator, so it clears the horizon everywhere short of latitude 86°S, in practice, every inhabited latitude on Earth. It passes directly overhead at latitude 4°N. It stands highest at midnight in July, so July and August evenings are the best time to look. At magnitude 4.62 it is a naked-eye star only under a dark sky, binoculars make it certain.
Alya belongs to Serpens.
What does Alya mean in astrology?
The classical fixed-star tradition: Ptolemy, the medieval Behenian lists, Robson’s 1923 compilation. Is silent on Alya, 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, Alya stands at 15° 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 Alya
- What does Alya mean in astrology?
- The classical fixed-star tradition has no documented meaning for Alya. Projected onto the zodiac, Alya stands at 15° Capricorn, and the Sun passes that degree each year around 4 January.
- Is Alya the brightest star?
- Alya shines at magnitude 4.62 · visible to the naked eye on a clear night, one of the few thousand stars with an officially recognised name.
- How far away is Alya?
- Alya is approximately 155 light-years from Earth. The light reaching us tonight began its journey around 155 years ago.
- Which constellation contains Alya?
- Alya is part of Serpens.
- Can everyone see Alya?
- It sits 4° north of the celestial equator, so it clears the horizon everywhere short of latitude 86°S, in practice, every inhabited latitude on Earth. It passes directly overhead at latitude 4°N. It stands highest at midnight in July, so July and August evenings are the best time to look. At magnitude 4.62 it is a naked-eye star only under a dark sky, binoculars make it certain.
- Is dedicating Alya an official astronomical renaming?
- No. Alya 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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