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A dedicated star
Dhanishta
white · Delphinus · γ1 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, Dhanishta becomes available again. Want it? Put the date in your calendar.
Dhanishta at a glance
- Constellation
- Delphinus
- Other name
- γ1 Del
- Catalogue number
- HIP 102531
- Distance
- ≈ 124 light-years
- Brightness
- Magnitude 4.96 naked-eye
- Star type
- A2Ia+...
- Colour
- white
- Best seen from
- Almost everywhere on Earth
- Right ascension
- 20h 46m 39s
- Declination
- +16° 07′ 27″
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 Dhanishta?
Dhanishta is a white supergiant. 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.
Its colour is not the whole story. A white star still in the steady part of its life would burn for about a 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 supergiant, which means it has left the stable part of its life and swollen enormously. Put it where the Sun is and its surface would swallow the inner planets. Stars this size do not fade quietly; this one will end as a supernova, and on a human timescale that could be tonight or in a million years.
Dhanishta moves noticeably against the background sky, about 20 arcseconds a century. The constellation it belongs to will not have quite this shape in ten thousand years.
The light you are looking at is old
The light arriving from Dhanishta tonight left in about 1902, some 124 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 Dhanishta?
It sits 16° north of the celestial equator, so it clears the horizon everywhere short of latitude 74°S, in practice, every inhabited latitude on Earth. It passes directly overhead at latitude 16°N. It stands highest at midnight in August, so August and September evenings are the best time to look. At magnitude 4.96 it is a naked-eye star only under a dark sky, binoculars make it certain.
Dhanishta belongs to Delphinus.
What does Dhanishta mean in astrology?
The classical fixed-star tradition: Ptolemy, the medieval Behenian lists, Robson’s 1923 compilation. Is silent on Dhanishta, 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, Dhanishta stands at 19° Aquarius at the J2000 epoch, and the Sun passes that degree around 7 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 Dhanishta
- What does Dhanishta mean in astrology?
- The classical fixed-star tradition has no documented meaning for Dhanishta. Projected onto the zodiac, Dhanishta stands at 19° Aquarius, and the Sun passes that degree each year around 7 February.
- Is Dhanishta the brightest star?
- Dhanishta shines at magnitude 4.96 · visible to the naked eye on a clear night, one of the few thousand stars with an officially recognised name.
- How far away is Dhanishta?
- Dhanishta is approximately 124 light-years from Earth. The light reaching us tonight began its journey around 124 years ago.
- Which constellation contains Dhanishta?
- Dhanishta is part of Delphinus.
- Can everyone see Dhanishta?
- It sits 16° north of the celestial equator, so it clears the horizon everywhere short of latitude 74°S, in practice, every inhabited latitude on Earth. It passes directly overhead at latitude 16°N. It stands highest at midnight in August, so August and September evenings are the best time to look. At magnitude 4.96 it is a naked-eye star only under a dark sky, binoculars make it certain.
- Is dedicating Dhanishta an official astronomical renaming?
- No. Dhanishta 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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