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A dedicated star
Diadem
yellow-white · Coma Berenices · α Com
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, Diadem becomes available again. Want it? Put the date in your calendar.
Diadem at a glance
- Constellation
- Coma Berenices
- Other name
- α Com
- Catalogue number
- HIP 64241
- Distance
- ≈ 58 light-years
- Brightness
- Magnitude 4.85 naked-eye
- Star type
- F5V
- Colour
- yellow-white
- Best seen from
- Almost everywhere on Earth
- Right ascension
- 13h 09m 59s
- Declination
- +17° 31′ 46″
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 Diadem?
Diadem is a yellow-white main-sequence star. Its surface runs about 6,000 to 7,500°C, a shade hotter than the Sun. 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.
A little brighter and a little shorter-lived than the Sun, and near the edge of the range where a planet could plausibly hold liquid water for long enough to matter.
A star of this class gets two to four thousand million years.
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.
Diadem moves noticeably against the background sky, about 46 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 you can see from Diadem left in 1968, 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 comfortably visible without equipment on a decent night.
What does the name Diadem mean?
==Overview== The word derives from the Greek διάδημα diádēma, "band" or "fillet", from διαδέω diadéō, "to bind around" or "to fasten".
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 Diadem?
It sits 18° north of the celestial equator, so it clears the horizon everywhere short of latitude 72°S, in practice, every inhabited latitude on Earth. It passes directly overhead at latitude 18°N. It stands highest at midnight in April, so April and May evenings are the best time to look. At magnitude 4.85 it is a naked-eye star only under a dark sky, binoculars make it certain.
Diadem belongs to Coma Berenices.
What does Diadem mean in astrology?
The classical fixed-star tradition: Ptolemy, the medieval Behenian lists, Robson’s 1923 compilation. Is silent on Diadem, 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, Diadem stands at 8° Libra at the J2000 epoch, and the Sun passes that degree around 28 September 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 Diadem
- What does Diadem mean in astrology?
- The classical fixed-star tradition has no documented meaning for Diadem. Projected onto the zodiac, Diadem stands at 8° Libra, and the Sun passes that degree each year around 28 September.
- Is Diadem the brightest star?
- Diadem shines at magnitude 4.85 · visible to the naked eye on a clear night, one of the few thousand stars with an officially recognised name.
- How far away is Diadem?
- Diadem is approximately 58 light-years from Earth. The light reaching us tonight began its journey around 58 years ago.
- Which constellation contains Diadem?
- Diadem is part of Coma Berenices.
- Can everyone see Diadem?
- It sits 18° north of the celestial equator, so it clears the horizon everywhere short of latitude 72°S, in practice, every inhabited latitude on Earth. It passes directly overhead at latitude 18°N. It stands highest at midnight in April, so April and May evenings are the best time to look. At magnitude 4.85 it is a naked-eye star only under a dark sky, binoculars make it certain.
- Is dedicating Diadem an official astronomical renaming?
- No. Diadem 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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