A dedicated star
Regulus
blue-white · Leo · α Leo
Dedicated to
Isabella Romano
by Luca Romano · August 14, 2026
“Per tutti i sogni che devi ancora realizzare. Che Regulus ti ricordi sempre di avere coraggio e di credere in te stessa.”
This dedication
- Dedicated to
- Isabella Romano
- Dedicated by
- Luca Romano
- Recorded
- August 14, 2026
- Held until
- August 14, 2027
When this dedication ends, Regulus becomes available again. Want it? Put the date in your calendar.
Regulus at a glance
- Constellation
- Leo
- Other name
- α Leo
- Catalogue number
- HIP 49669
- Distance
- ≈ 79 light-years
- Brightness
- Magnitude 1.36 naked-eye
- Star type
- B8 IVn
- Colour
- blue-white
- Best seen from
- Almost everywhere on Earth
- Right ascension
- 10h 08m 22s
- Declination
- +11° 58′ 02″
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 Regulus?
Regulus is a blue-white subgiant. 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 subgiant, caught in the short crossing between an ordinary life and a giant one. Its core has run out of hydrogen but its outer layers have not finished expanding, and astronomically this stage passes quickly.
The light you are looking at is old
The light you can see from Regulus left in 1947, 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 also one of the brighter stars in the sky, which is why it carries a proper name at all rather than a catalogue number.
What does the name Regulus mean?
The traditional name Rēgulus is Latin for 'prince' or 'little king'.
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 Regulus?
It sits 12° north of the celestial equator, so it clears the horizon everywhere short of latitude 78°S, in practice, every inhabited latitude on Earth. It passes directly overhead at latitude 12°N. It stands highest at midnight in February, so February and March evenings are the best time to look. At magnitude 1.36 it is bright enough to hold its own over city lights.
Regulus belongs to Leo, where it is the brightest star.
What does Regulus mean in astrology?
The "heart of the Lion" and the most royal star of the tradition, one of Persia's four royal stars, watcher of the north. Nature of Mars and Jupiter: leadership, honours and public success, with the old warning attached that the success lasts only as long as revenge is renounced.
Projected onto the zodiac the way fixed-star astrology reads any star, Regulus stands at 29° Leo at the J2000 epoch, and the Sun passes that degree around 19 August 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 Regulus
- What does Regulus mean in astrology?
- The "heart of the Lion" and the most royal star of the tradition, one of Persia's four royal stars, watcher of the north. Nature of Mars and Jupiter: leadership, honours and public success, with the old warning attached that the success lasts only as long as revenge is renounced. Projected onto the zodiac, Regulus stands at 29° Leo, and the Sun passes that degree each year around 19 August.
- Is Regulus the brightest star?
- Regulus shines at magnitude 1.36 · visible to the naked eye on a clear night, one of the few thousand stars with an officially recognised name.
- How far away is Regulus?
- Regulus is approximately 79 light-years from Earth. The light reaching us tonight began its journey around 79 years ago.
- Which constellation contains Regulus?
- Regulus is the brightest star in Leo.
- Can everyone see Regulus?
- It sits 12° north of the celestial equator, so it clears the horizon everywhere short of latitude 78°S, in practice, every inhabited latitude on Earth. It passes directly overhead at latitude 12°N. It stands highest at midnight in February, so February and March evenings are the best time to look. At magnitude 1.36 it is bright enough to hold its own over city lights.
- Is dedicating Regulus an official astronomical renaming?
- No. Regulus 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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