Preview. This is a sample dedication, shown so you can see what a dedicated star page looks like.
A dedicated star
Mira
deep red · Cetus · ο Cet
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, Mira becomes available again. Want it? Put the date in your calendar.
Mira at a glance
- Constellation
- Cetus
- Other name
- ο Cet
- Catalogue number
- HIP 10826
- Distance
- ≈ 299 light-years
- Brightness
- Magnitude 6.47 naked-eye
- Star type
- M5e-M9e
- Colour
- deep red
- Best seen from
- Almost everywhere on Earth
- Right ascension
- 02h 19m 21s
- Declination
- −02° 58′ 40″
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 Mira?
Mira is a red star. Its surface runs under 4,000°C, which is cool as stars go and why the colour is unmistakably red. 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.
Most of the stars in the galaxy are this kind and almost none of them are visible to the eye. The red ones you can see are the exceptions: enormous, swollen and close to the end rather than small and long-lived.
A star of this class gets hundreds of thousands of millions of years for the small ones.
Mira moves noticeably against the background sky, about 24 arcseconds a century. The constellation it belongs to will not have quite this shape in ten thousand years.
The light you are looking at is old
The light arriving from Mira tonight left in about 1727, some 299 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 Mira?
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 October, so October and November evenings are the best time to look. At magnitude 6.47 it is a naked-eye star only under a dark sky, binoculars make it certain.
Mira belongs to Cetus.
What does Mira mean in astrology?
The classical fixed-star tradition: Ptolemy, the medieval Behenian lists, Robson’s 1923 compilation. Is silent on Mira, 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, Mira stands at 1° Taurus at the J2000 epoch, and the Sun passes that degree around 21 April 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 Mira
- What does Mira mean in astrology?
- The classical fixed-star tradition has no documented meaning for Mira. Projected onto the zodiac, Mira stands at 1° Taurus, and the Sun passes that degree each year around 21 April.
- Is Mira the brightest star?
- Mira shines at magnitude 6.47 · visible to the naked eye on a clear night, one of the few thousand stars with an officially recognised name.
- How far away is Mira?
- Mira is approximately 299 light-years from Earth. The light reaching us tonight began its journey around 299 years ago.
- Which constellation contains Mira?
- Mira is part of Cetus.
- Can everyone see Mira?
- 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 October, so October and November evenings are the best time to look. At magnitude 6.47 it is a naked-eye star only under a dark sky, binoculars make it certain.
- Is dedicating Mira an official astronomical renaming?
- No. Mira 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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