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A dedicated star
Celaeno
blue-white · Taurus · 16 Tau
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, Celaeno becomes available again. Want it? Put the date in your calendar.
Celaeno at a glance
- Constellation
- Taurus
- Other name
- 16 Tau
- Catalogue number
- HIP 17489
- Distance
- ≈ 377 light-years
- Brightness
- Magnitude 5.45 naked-eye
- Star type
- B7IV
- Colour
- blue-white
- Best seen from
- Almost everywhere on Earth
- Right ascension
- 03h 44m 48s
- Declination
- +24° 17′ 22″
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 Celaeno?
Celaeno is a blue-white subgiant. 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.
It is spending its fuel at a rate the Sun never will. Most of the bright stars in familiar constellations are this kind, which is why the night sky looks younger and hotter than the average star actually is.
A star of this class gets tens of millions of years, against the Sun's ten thousand million.
It is a subgiant, caught in the short crossing between an ordinary life and a giant one. Its core has run out of hydrogen but its outer layers have not finished expanding, and astronomically this stage passes quickly.
Celaeno drifts about 4.9 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 Celaeno tonight left in about 1649, some 377 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 sits at the edge of what an unaided eye can do, so finding it is a deliberate act rather than an accident.
Where can you see Celaeno?
It sits 24° north of the celestial equator, so it clears the horizon everywhere short of latitude 66°S, in practice, every inhabited latitude on Earth. It passes directly overhead at latitude 24°N. It stands highest at midnight in November, so November and December evenings are the best time to look. At magnitude 5.45 it is a naked-eye star only under a dark sky, binoculars make it certain.
Celaeno belongs to Taurus.
What does Celaeno mean in astrology?
The classical fixed-star tradition: Ptolemy, the medieval Behenian lists, Robson’s 1923 compilation. Is silent on Celaeno, 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, Celaeno stands at 29° Taurus at the J2000 epoch, and the Sun passes that degree around 19 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 Celaeno
- What does Celaeno mean in astrology?
- The classical fixed-star tradition has no documented meaning for Celaeno. Projected onto the zodiac, Celaeno stands at 29° Taurus, and the Sun passes that degree each year around 19 May.
- Is Celaeno the brightest star?
- Celaeno shines at magnitude 5.45 · visible to the naked eye on a clear night, one of the few thousand stars with an officially recognised name.
- How far away is Celaeno?
- Celaeno is approximately 377 light-years from Earth. The light reaching us tonight began its journey around 377 years ago.
- Which constellation contains Celaeno?
- Celaeno is part of Taurus.
- Can everyone see Celaeno?
- It sits 24° north of the celestial equator, so it clears the horizon everywhere short of latitude 66°S, in practice, every inhabited latitude on Earth. It passes directly overhead at latitude 24°N. It stands highest at midnight in November, so November and December evenings are the best time to look. At magnitude 5.45 it is a naked-eye star only under a dark sky, binoculars make it certain.
- Is dedicating Celaeno an official astronomical renaming?
- No. Celaeno 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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