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A dedicated star
Phoenicia
warm orange · Aquila · V1703 Aql
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, Phoenicia becomes available again. Want it? Put the date in your calendar.
Phoenicia at a glance
- Constellation
- Aquila
- Other name
- V1703 Aql
- Catalogue number
- HIP 99711
- Distance
- ≈ 63 light-years
- Brightness
- Magnitude 7.79 telescope
- Star type
- K0
- Colour
- warm orange
- Best seen from
- Almost everywhere on Earth
- Right ascension
- 20h 14m 00s
- Declination
- −00° 52′ 01″
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 Phoenicia?
Phoenicia is an orange star. Its surface runs roughly 4,000 to 5,000°C, cool enough that the light carries a visible orange. 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.
Nothing of this kind has ever died of old age, anywhere, because the universe is not old enough yet. Every one that has ever formed is still burning.
A star of this class gets twenty to fifty thousand million years, far longer than the universe has yet existed.
Phoenicia moves noticeably against the background sky, about 27 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 you can see from Phoenicia left in 1963, 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.
What does the name Phoenicia mean?
' Obelisks at Karnak contain references to a "land of fnḫw", fnḫw being the plural form of fnḫ, the Ancient Egyptian word for 'carpenter.
poenicus, later pūnicus, comes from Greek Φοινίκη, Phoiníkē.
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.
Where can you see Phoenicia?
It sits 1° south of the celestial equator, so it clears the horizon everywhere short of latitude 89°N, in practice, every inhabited latitude on Earth. It passes directly overhead at latitude 1°S. It stands highest at midnight in July, so July and August evenings are the best time to look. At magnitude 7.79 it sits below naked-eye reach; binoculars or a small telescope will find it.
Phoenicia belongs to Aquila.
What does Phoenicia mean in astrology?
The classical fixed-star tradition: Ptolemy, the medieval Behenian lists, Robson’s 1923 compilation. Is silent on Phoenicia, 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, Phoenicia stands at 5° Aquarius at the J2000 epoch, and the Sun passes that degree around 24 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 Phoenicia
- What does Phoenicia mean in astrology?
- The classical fixed-star tradition has no documented meaning for Phoenicia. Projected onto the zodiac, Phoenicia stands at 5° Aquarius, and the Sun passes that degree each year around 24 January.
- Is Phoenicia the brightest star?
- Phoenicia shines at magnitude 7.79 · a binocular-and-telescope star, one of the few thousand stars with an officially recognised name.
- How far away is Phoenicia?
- Phoenicia is approximately 63 light-years from Earth. The light reaching us tonight began its journey around 63 years ago.
- Which constellation contains Phoenicia?
- Phoenicia is part of Aquila.
- Can everyone see Phoenicia?
- It sits 1° south of the celestial equator, so it clears the horizon everywhere short of latitude 89°N, in practice, every inhabited latitude on Earth. It passes directly overhead at latitude 1°S. It stands highest at midnight in July, so July and August evenings are the best time to look. At magnitude 7.79 it sits below naked-eye reach; binoculars or a small telescope will find it.
- Is dedicating Phoenicia an official astronomical renaming?
- No. Phoenicia 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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