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A dedicated star
Nushagak
golden · Cassiopeia · HD 17156
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, Nushagak becomes available again. Want it? Put the date in your calendar.
Nushagak at a glance
- Constellation
- Cassiopeia
- Other name
- HD 17156
- Catalogue number
- HIP 13192
- Distance
- ≈ 245 light-years
- Brightness
- Magnitude 8.17 telescope
- Star type
- G5
- Colour
- golden
- Best seen from
- The far northern sky
- Right ascension
- 02h 49m 44s
- Declination
- +71° 45′ 12″
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 Nushagak?
Nushagak is a yellow star. 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.
This is the Sun's class. Looking at a star like this is the closest you get to seeing what our own star looks like from outside, which is a stranger thought than it first sounds.
A star of this class gets around ten thousand million years, and the Sun is halfway through its own.
Nushagak drifts about 9.7 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 Nushagak tonight left in about 1781, some 245 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 Nushagak?
It is a deep-northern star: easy from Europe, North America and northern Asia, but it never rises for observers south of about latitude 18°S. It passes directly overhead at latitude 72°N. It stands highest at midnight in November, so November and December evenings are the best time to look. At magnitude 8.17 it sits below naked-eye reach; binoculars or a small telescope will find it.
Nushagak belongs to Cassiopeia.
What does Nushagak mean in astrology?
The classical fixed-star tradition: Ptolemy, the medieval Behenian lists, Robson’s 1923 compilation. Is silent on Nushagak, 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, Nushagak stands at 7° Gemini at the J2000 epoch, and the Sun passes that degree around 28 May 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 Nushagak
- What does Nushagak mean in astrology?
- The classical fixed-star tradition has no documented meaning for Nushagak. Projected onto the zodiac, Nushagak stands at 7° Gemini, and the Sun passes that degree each year around 28 May.
- Is Nushagak the brightest star?
- Nushagak shines at magnitude 8.17 · a binocular-and-telescope star, one of the few thousand stars with an officially recognised name.
- How far away is Nushagak?
- Nushagak is approximately 245 light-years from Earth. The light reaching us tonight began its journey around 245 years ago.
- Which constellation contains Nushagak?
- Nushagak is part of Cassiopeia.
- Can everyone see Nushagak?
- It is a deep-northern star: easy from Europe, North America and northern Asia, but it never rises for observers south of about latitude 18°S. It passes directly overhead at latitude 72°N. It stands highest at midnight in November, so November and December evenings are the best time to look. At magnitude 8.17 it sits below naked-eye reach; binoculars or a small telescope will find it.
- Is dedicating Nushagak an official astronomical renaming?
- No. Nushagak 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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