Preview. This is a sample dedication, shown so you can see what a dedicated star page looks like.
A dedicated star
Formosa
golden · Leo · HD 100655
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, Formosa becomes available again. Want it? Put the date in your calendar.
Formosa at a glance
- Constellation
- Leo
- Other name
- HD 100655
- Catalogue number
- HIP 56508
- Distance
- ≈ 399 light-years
- Brightness
- Magnitude 6.45 naked-eye
- Star type
- G9III
- Colour
- golden
- Best seen from
- Almost everywhere on Earth
- Right ascension
- 11h 35m 04s
- Declination
- +20° 26′ 30″
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 Formosa?
Formosa is a yellow giant. Its surface runs about 5,500°C, near enough the Sun's own surface temperature. 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 yellow star still in the steady part of its life would burn for about ten 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 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.
Formosa drifts about 5.9 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 Formosa tonight left in about 1627, some 399 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 Formosa?
It sits 20° north of the celestial equator, so it clears the horizon everywhere short of latitude 70°S, in practice, every inhabited latitude on Earth. It passes directly overhead at latitude 20°N. It stands highest at midnight in March, so March and April evenings are the best time to look. At magnitude 6.45 it is a naked-eye star only under a dark sky, binoculars make it certain.
Formosa belongs to Leo.
What does Formosa mean in astrology?
The classical fixed-star tradition: Ptolemy, the medieval Behenian lists, Robson’s 1923 compilation. Is silent on Formosa, 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, Formosa stands at 15° Virgo at the J2000 epoch, and the Sun passes that degree around 4 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 Formosa
- What does Formosa mean in astrology?
- The classical fixed-star tradition has no documented meaning for Formosa. Projected onto the zodiac, Formosa stands at 15° Virgo, and the Sun passes that degree each year around 4 September.
- Is Formosa the brightest star?
- Formosa shines at magnitude 6.45 · visible to the naked eye on a clear night, one of the few thousand stars with an officially recognised name.
- How far away is Formosa?
- Formosa is approximately 399 light-years from Earth. The light reaching us tonight began its journey around 399 years ago.
- Which constellation contains Formosa?
- Formosa is part of Leo.
- Can everyone see Formosa?
- It sits 20° north of the celestial equator, so it clears the horizon everywhere short of latitude 70°S, in practice, every inhabited latitude on Earth. It passes directly overhead at latitude 20°N. It stands highest at midnight in March, so March and April evenings are the best time to look. At magnitude 6.45 it is a naked-eye star only under a dark sky, binoculars make it certain.
- Is dedicating Formosa an official astronomical renaming?
- No. Formosa 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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