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A dedicated star
Dingolay
warm orange · Leo · HD 96063
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, Dingolay becomes available again. Want it? Put the date in your calendar.
Dingolay at a glance
- Constellation
- Leo
- Other name
- HD 96063
- Catalogue number
- HIP 54158
- Distance
- ≈ 515 light-years
- Brightness
- Magnitude 8.21 telescope
- Star type
- K0
- Colour
- warm orange
- Best seen from
- Almost everywhere on Earth
- Right ascension
- 11h 04m 44s
- Declination
- −02° 30′ 48″
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 Dingolay?
Dingolay is an orange star. Its surface runs roughly 4,000 to 5,000°C, cool enough that the light carries a visible orange. 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.
Nothing of this kind has ever died of old age, anywhere, because the universe is not old enough yet. Every one that has ever formed is still burning.
A star of this class gets twenty to fifty thousand million years, far longer than the universe has yet existed.
Dingolay drifts about 3.2 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
Dingolay is about 515 light years away, so the light reaching you now set out around 1511. You are not looking at the star as it is. You are looking at the star as it was, and there is no way to see it any other way.
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 Dingolay?
It sits 3° south of the celestial equator, so it clears the horizon everywhere short of latitude 87°N, in practice, every inhabited latitude on Earth. It passes directly overhead at latitude 3°S. It stands highest at midnight in March, so March and April evenings are the best time to look. At magnitude 8.21 it sits below naked-eye reach; binoculars or a small telescope will find it.
Dingolay belongs to Leo.
What does Dingolay mean in astrology?
The classical fixed-star tradition: Ptolemy, the medieval Behenian lists, Robson’s 1923 compilation. Is silent on Dingolay, 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, Dingolay stands at 18° Virgo at the J2000 epoch, and the Sun passes that degree around 7 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 Dingolay
- What does Dingolay mean in astrology?
- The classical fixed-star tradition has no documented meaning for Dingolay. Projected onto the zodiac, Dingolay stands at 18° Virgo, and the Sun passes that degree each year around 7 September.
- Is Dingolay the brightest star?
- Dingolay shines at magnitude 8.21 · a binocular-and-telescope star, one of the few thousand stars with an officially recognised name.
- How far away is Dingolay?
- Dingolay is approximately 515 light-years from Earth. The light reaching us tonight began its journey around 515 years ago.
- Which constellation contains Dingolay?
- Dingolay is part of Leo.
- Can everyone see Dingolay?
- It sits 3° south of the celestial equator, so it clears the horizon everywhere short of latitude 87°N, in practice, every inhabited latitude on Earth. It passes directly overhead at latitude 3°S. It stands highest at midnight in March, so March and April evenings are the best time to look. At magnitude 8.21 it sits below naked-eye reach; binoculars or a small telescope will find it.
- Is dedicating Dingolay an official astronomical renaming?
- No. Dingolay 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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