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A dedicated star
Meleph
white · Cancer · ε Cnc
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, Meleph becomes available again. Want it? Put the date in your calendar.
Meleph at a glance
- Constellation
- Cancer
- Other name
- ε Cnc
- Catalogue number
- HIP 42556
- Distance
- ≈ 587 light-years
- Brightness
- Magnitude 6.29 naked-eye
- Star type
- Am
- Colour
- white
- Best seen from
- Almost everywhere on Earth
- Right ascension
- 08h 40m 27s
- Declination
- +19° 32′ 41″
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 Meleph?
Meleph is a white star. Its surface runs around 7,500 to 10,000°C, hot enough to look white or blue-white to the eye. 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.
These are the classic bright white stars. Sirius and Vega are both this kind, and they are the reason people describe stars as white when most of the galaxy's stars are actually red and too faint to see.
A star of this class gets roughly a thousand million years, a tenth of what the Sun gets.
Meleph drifts about 3.6 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
Meleph is about 587 light years away, so the light reaching you now set out around 1439. 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 Meleph?
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 January, so January and February evenings are the best time to look. At magnitude 6.29 it is a naked-eye star only under a dark sky, binoculars make it certain.
Meleph belongs to Cancer.
What does Meleph mean in astrology?
The classical fixed-star tradition: Ptolemy, the medieval Behenian lists, Robson’s 1923 compilation. Is silent on Meleph, 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, Meleph stands at 7° Leo at the J2000 epoch, and the Sun passes that degree around 27 July 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 Meleph
- What does Meleph mean in astrology?
- The classical fixed-star tradition has no documented meaning for Meleph. Projected onto the zodiac, Meleph stands at 7° Leo, and the Sun passes that degree each year around 27 July.
- Is Meleph the brightest star?
- Meleph shines at magnitude 6.29 · visible to the naked eye on a clear night, one of the few thousand stars with an officially recognised name.
- How far away is Meleph?
- Meleph is approximately 587 light-years from Earth. The light reaching us tonight began its journey around 587 years ago.
- Which constellation contains Meleph?
- Meleph is part of Cancer.
- Can everyone see Meleph?
- 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 January, so January and February evenings are the best time to look. At magnitude 6.29 it is a naked-eye star only under a dark sky, binoculars make it certain.
- Is dedicating Meleph an official astronomical renaming?
- No. Meleph 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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