Preview. This is a sample dedication, shown so you can see what a dedicated star page looks like.
A dedicated star
Gumala
yellow-white · Sagittarius · V5652 Sgr
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, Gumala becomes available again. Want it? Put the date in your calendar.
Gumala at a glance
- Constellation
- Sagittarius
- Other name
- V5652 Sgr
- Catalogue number
- HIP 94645
- Distance
- ≈ 90 light-years
- Brightness
- Magnitude 6.25 naked-eye
- Star type
- F8V
- Colour
- yellow-white
- Best seen from
- Almost everywhere on Earth
- Right ascension
- 19h 15m 33s
- Declination
- −24° 10′ 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 Gumala?
Gumala 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.
Gumala drifts about 15.3 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 you can see from Gumala left in 1936, 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 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 Gumala?
It sits 24° south of the celestial equator, so it clears the horizon everywhere short of latitude 66°N, in practice, every inhabited latitude on Earth. It passes directly overhead at latitude 24°S. It stands highest at midnight in July, so July and August evenings are the best time to look. At magnitude 6.25 it is a naked-eye star only under a dark sky, binoculars make it certain.
Gumala belongs to Sagittarius.
What does Gumala mean in astrology?
The classical fixed-star tradition: Ptolemy, the medieval Behenian lists, Robson’s 1923 compilation. Is silent on Gumala, 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, Gumala stands at 17° Capricorn at the J2000 epoch, and the Sun passes that degree around 5 January 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 Gumala
- What does Gumala mean in astrology?
- The classical fixed-star tradition has no documented meaning for Gumala. Projected onto the zodiac, Gumala stands at 17° Capricorn, and the Sun passes that degree each year around 5 January.
- Is Gumala the brightest star?
- Gumala shines at magnitude 6.25 · visible to the naked eye on a clear night, one of the few thousand stars with an officially recognised name.
- How far away is Gumala?
- Gumala is approximately 90 light-years from Earth. The light reaching us tonight began its journey around 90 years ago.
- Which constellation contains Gumala?
- Gumala is part of Sagittarius.
- Can everyone see Gumala?
- It sits 24° south of the celestial equator, so it clears the horizon everywhere short of latitude 66°N, in practice, every inhabited latitude on Earth. It passes directly overhead at latitude 24°S. It stands highest at midnight in July, so July and August evenings are the best time to look. At magnitude 6.25 it is a naked-eye star only under a dark sky, binoculars make it certain.
- Is dedicating Gumala an official astronomical renaming?
- No. Gumala 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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