Preview. This is a sample dedication, shown so you can see what a dedicated star page looks like.
A dedicated star
Rukbat
blue-white · Sagittarius · α Sgr
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, Rukbat becomes available again. Want it? Put the date in your calendar.
Rukbat at a glance
- Constellation
- Sagittarius
- Other name
- α Sgr
- Catalogue number
- HIP 95347
- Distance
- ≈ 182 light-years
- Brightness
- Magnitude 3.96 naked-eye
- Star type
- B8V
- Colour
- blue-white
- Best seen from
- The Southern Hemisphere and lower northern latitudes
- Right ascension
- 19h 23m 53s
- Declination
- −40° 36′ 57″
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 Rukbat?
Rukbat 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.
Rukbat drifts about 12.5 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 Rukbat tonight left in about 1844, some 182 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 is comfortably visible without equipment on a decent night.
What does the name Rukbat mean?
The star bore the traditional names Rukbat and Alrami, derived from the Arabic rukbat al-rāmī 'the knee of the archer'.
The star Delta Cassiopeiae also bore the traditional names Ruchbah or Rukbat, from the Arabic word ركبة rukbah meaning "knee".
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 Rukbat?
It is easy to see from much of the Southern Hemisphere. It can also appear from lower northern latitudes, but it never rises for observers north of about latitude 49°N. It passes directly overhead at latitude 41°S. It stands highest at midnight in July, so July and August evenings are the best time to look. At magnitude 3.96 it is a naked-eye star only under a dark sky, binoculars make it certain.
Rukbat belongs to Sagittarius.
What does Rukbat mean in astrology?
The classical fixed-star tradition: Ptolemy, the medieval Behenian lists, Robson’s 1923 compilation. Is silent on Rukbat, 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, Rukbat stands at 16° Capricorn at the J2000 epoch, and the Sun passes that degree around 5 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 Rukbat
- What does Rukbat mean in astrology?
- The classical fixed-star tradition has no documented meaning for Rukbat. Projected onto the zodiac, Rukbat stands at 16° Capricorn, and the Sun passes that degree each year around 5 January.
- Is Rukbat the brightest star?
- Rukbat shines at magnitude 3.96 · visible to the naked eye on a clear night, one of the few thousand stars with an officially recognised name.
- How far away is Rukbat?
- Rukbat is approximately 182 light-years from Earth. The light reaching us tonight began its journey around 182 years ago.
- Which constellation contains Rukbat?
- Rukbat is part of Sagittarius.
- Can everyone see Rukbat?
- It is easy to see from much of the Southern Hemisphere. It can also appear from lower northern latitudes, but it never rises for observers north of about latitude 49°N. It passes directly overhead at latitude 41°S. It stands highest at midnight in July, so July and August evenings are the best time to look. At magnitude 3.96 it is a naked-eye star only under a dark sky, binoculars make it certain.
- Is dedicating Rukbat an official astronomical renaming?
- No. Rukbat 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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