The AsterNym star registry
Okab
Okab: the white star of Aquila
white · Aquila · ζ Aql
Okab is a white star, burning hotter than our own Sun in the constellation Aquila, one of the stars with a proper name recognised in the IAU Catalog of Star Names. At magnitude 2.99 it is visible to the naked eye under a dark sky.
Most stars in the sky are anonymous points of light. Okab is not. Some IAU-recognised names are ancient; others were adopted by the IAU only recently. Either way, the star already has a scientific identity, and a dedication attaches a human story to it.
Real star · Personal dedication · Recorded in the AsterNym registry
See what a dedicated page looks like: preview
Okab at a glance
- Constellation
- Aquila
- Other name
- ζ Aql
- Catalogue number
- HIP 93747
- Distance
- ≈ 83 light-years
- Brightness
- Magnitude 2.99 naked-eye
- Star type
- A0Vn
- Colour
- white
- Best seen from
- Almost everywhere on Earth
- Right ascension
- 19h 05m 25s
- Declination
- +13° 51′ 49″
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 Okab?
Okab is a white main-sequence 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.
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.
Okab drifts about 9.6 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
The light you can see from Okab left in 1943, 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 is comfortably visible without equipment on a decent night.
What does the name Okab mean?
Zeta and Epsilon Aquilae together bore the traditional name Deneb el Okab, from an Arabic term ذنب العقاب Dhanab al-ʽuqāb "the tail of the eagle", which they mark (Aquila is Latin for 'eagle').
In the catalogue of stars in the Calendarium of Al Achsasi Al Mouakket, Zeta Aquilae was designated Dzeneb al Tair (from the Arabic ذنب الطائر ðanab aṭ-ṭā’ir), which was translated into Latin as Cauda (Vulturis) Volantis, meaning the eagle's tail'.
Name origin from English Wikipedia. AsterNym does not invent an etymology where none is recorded, and most stars in this catalogue have none: they carry modern names, or a catalogue designation and nothing older.
What could a Okab dedication represent?
Okab is especially meaningful for someone who:
- · Deserves something older than any gift shop
- · Marks a beginning, an anniversary or a promise
- · Is remembered every time you look up
- · Has a light you want recorded somewhere permanent
Dedication idea
“For the one I think of when I find Aquila in the sky.”
Where can you see Okab?
It sits 14° north of the celestial equator, so it clears the horizon everywhere short of latitude 76°S, in practice, every inhabited latitude on Earth. It passes directly overhead at latitude 14°N. It stands highest at midnight in July, so July and August evenings are the best time to look. At magnitude 2.99 it is an easy naked-eye star from any reasonably dark spot.
Okab belongs to Aquila.
What does Okab mean in astrology?
The classical fixed-star tradition: Ptolemy, the medieval Behenian lists, Robson’s 1923 compilation. Is silent on Okab, 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, Okab stands at 19° Capricorn at the J2000 epoch, and the Sun passes that degree around 8 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.
Dedicate Okab to someone who matters
A flower fades. A card is eventually put away. A star gives your message a place in the sky.
from$29.95a year
Dedicate Okab →Real star · your message · a page to share
Your Okab dedication includes
- Your chosen dedication name
- Your personal message
- Okab's real astronomical coordinates
- A shareable dedication page
- Its location on the AsterNym Galaxy Map
- An optional printable certificate and gift presentation
Okab keeps its established astronomical name. Your dedication is a personal commemorative record within the AsterNym registry.
Frequently asked questions about Okab
- What does Okab mean in astrology?
- The classical fixed-star tradition has no documented meaning for Okab. Projected onto the zodiac, Okab stands at 19° Capricorn, and the Sun passes that degree each year around 8 January.
- Is Okab the brightest star?
- Okab shines at magnitude 2.99 · visible to the naked eye on a clear night, one of the few thousand stars with an officially recognised name.
- How far away is Okab?
- Okab is approximately 83 light-years from Earth. The light reaching us tonight began its journey around 83 years ago.
- Which constellation contains Okab?
- Okab is part of Aquila.
- Can everyone see Okab?
- It sits 14° north of the celestial equator, so it clears the horizon everywhere short of latitude 76°S, in practice, every inhabited latitude on Earth. It passes directly overhead at latitude 14°N. It stands highest at midnight in July, so July and August evenings are the best time to look. At magnitude 2.99 it is an easy naked-eye star from any reasonably dark spot.
- Is dedicating Okab an official astronomical renaming?
- No. Okab 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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