Preview. This is a sample dedication, shown so you can see what a dedicated star page looks like.
A dedicated star
Dubhe
warm orange · Ursa Major · α UMa
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, Dubhe becomes available again. Want it? Put the date in your calendar.
Dubhe at a glance
- Constellation
- Ursa Major
- Other name
- α UMa
- Catalogue number
- HIP 54061
- Distance
- ≈ 123 light-years
- Brightness
- Magnitude 1.79 naked-eye
- Star type
- K0 III
- Colour
- warm orange
- Best seen from
- The far northern sky
- Right ascension
- 11h 03m 44s
- Declination
- +61° 45′ 04″
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 Dubhe?
Dubhe is an orange giant. 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.
Its colour is not the whole story. An orange star still in the steady part of its life would burn for tens of thousands of millions of 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 giant, which is what a star becomes when it exhausts the hydrogen in its core. It has swollen outward and cooled at the surface, and it is now brighter than it ever was as a young star. The Sun will do this too, in about five thousand million years.
The light you are looking at is old
The light arriving from Dubhe tonight left in about 1903, some 123 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 also one of the brighter stars in the sky, which is why it carries a proper name at all rather than a catalogue number.
What does the name Dubhe mean?
It bore the traditional name Dubhe, which is derived from the Arabic for 'bear', from the phrase ظهر الدب الاكبر, 'the back of the Greater Bear'.
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 Dubhe?
It is a deep-northern star: easy from Europe, North America and northern Asia, but it never rises for observers south of about latitude 28°S. It passes directly overhead at latitude 62°N. It stands highest at midnight in March, so March and April evenings are the best time to look. At magnitude 1.79 it is an easy naked-eye star from any reasonably dark spot.
Dubhe belongs to Ursa Major.
What does Dubhe mean in astrology?
The classical fixed-star tradition: Ptolemy, the medieval Behenian lists, Robson’s 1923 compilation. Is silent on Dubhe, 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, Dubhe stands at 15° Leo at the J2000 epoch, and the Sun passes that degree around 4 August 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 Dubhe
- What does Dubhe mean in astrology?
- The classical fixed-star tradition has no documented meaning for Dubhe. Projected onto the zodiac, Dubhe stands at 15° Leo, and the Sun passes that degree each year around 4 August.
- Is Dubhe the brightest star?
- Dubhe shines at magnitude 1.79 · visible to the naked eye on a clear night, one of the few thousand stars with an officially recognised name.
- How far away is Dubhe?
- Dubhe is approximately 123 light-years from Earth. The light reaching us tonight began its journey around 123 years ago.
- Which constellation contains Dubhe?
- Dubhe is part of Ursa Major.
- Can everyone see Dubhe?
- It is a deep-northern star: easy from Europe, North America and northern Asia, but it never rises for observers south of about latitude 28°S. It passes directly overhead at latitude 62°N. It stands highest at midnight in March, so March and April evenings are the best time to look. At magnitude 1.79 it is an easy naked-eye star from any reasonably dark spot.
- Is dedicating Dubhe an official astronomical renaming?
- No. Dubhe 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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