The AsterNym star registry
Piautos
Piautos: the blue-white star of Cancer
blue-white · Cancer · λ Cnc
Piautos is a blue-white star, the colour of the hottest, youngest suns in the constellation Cancer, one of the stars with a proper name recognised in the IAU Catalog of Star Names. At magnitude 5.92 it is visible to the naked eye under a dark sky.
Most stars in the sky are anonymous points of light. Piautos 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
Piautos at a glance
- Constellation
- Cancer
- Other name
- λ Cnc
- Catalogue number
- HIP 40881
- Distance
- ≈ 457 light-years
- Brightness
- Magnitude 5.92 naked-eye
- Star type
- B9.5V
- Colour
- blue-white
- Best seen from
- Almost everywhere on Earth
- Right ascension
- 08h 20m 32s
- Declination
- +24° 01′ 20″
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 Piautos?
Piautos is a blue-white main-sequence star. Its surface runs somewhere between 10,000 and 30,000°C, which is what gives it a blue-white cast. 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.
It is spending its fuel at a rate the Sun never will. Most of the bright stars in familiar constellations are this kind, which is why the night sky looks younger and hotter than the average star actually is.
A star of this class gets tens of millions of years, against the Sun's ten thousand million.
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.
Piautos barely moves against the background sky, which is mostly a statement about how far away it is. For every practical purpose, including yours, it is fixed.
The light you are looking at is old
Piautos is about 457 light years away, so the light reaching you now set out around 1569. 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.
What does the name Piautos mean?
Walter Crum was of the opinion that Piautos is formed from the Greek word autos "self" and the Coptic determiner pi- "that", which is automatically tacked onto Greek nouns.
The combination would (in Greek) mean "the same, the very one".
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 Piautos dedication represent?
Piautos 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 Cancer in the sky.”
Where can you see Piautos?
It sits 24° north of the celestial equator, so it clears the horizon everywhere short of latitude 66°S, in practice, every inhabited latitude on Earth. It passes directly overhead at latitude 24°N. It stands highest at midnight in January, so January and February evenings are the best time to look. At magnitude 5.92 it is a naked-eye star only under a dark sky, binoculars make it certain.
Piautos belongs to Cancer.
What does Piautos mean in astrology?
The classical fixed-star tradition: Ptolemy, the medieval Behenian lists, Robson’s 1923 compilation. Is silent on Piautos, 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, Piautos stands at 1° Leo at the J2000 epoch, and the Sun passes that degree around 22 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.
Dedicate Piautos 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 Piautos →Real star · your message · a page to share
Your Piautos dedication includes
- Your chosen dedication name
- Your personal message
- Piautos's real astronomical coordinates
- A shareable dedication page
- Its location on the AsterNym Galaxy Map
- An optional printable certificate and gift presentation
Piautos keeps its established astronomical name. Your dedication is a personal commemorative record within the AsterNym registry.
Frequently asked questions about Piautos
- What does Piautos mean in astrology?
- The classical fixed-star tradition has no documented meaning for Piautos. Projected onto the zodiac, Piautos stands at 1° Leo, and the Sun passes that degree each year around 22 July.
- Is Piautos the brightest star?
- Piautos shines at magnitude 5.92 · visible to the naked eye on a clear night, one of the few thousand stars with an officially recognised name.
- How far away is Piautos?
- Piautos is approximately 457 light-years from Earth. The light reaching us tonight began its journey around 457 years ago.
- Which constellation contains Piautos?
- Piautos is part of Cancer.
- Can everyone see Piautos?
- It sits 24° north of the celestial equator, so it clears the horizon everywhere short of latitude 66°S, in practice, every inhabited latitude on Earth. It passes directly overhead at latitude 24°N. It stands highest at midnight in January, so January and February evenings are the best time to look. At magnitude 5.92 it is a naked-eye star only under a dark sky, binoculars make it certain.
- Is dedicating Piautos an official astronomical renaming?
- No. Piautos 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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