Preview. This is a sample dedication, shown so you can see what a dedicated star page looks like.
A dedicated star
Shaula
blue · Scorpius · λ Sco
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, Shaula becomes available again. Want it? Put the date in your calendar.
Shaula at a glance
- Constellation
- Scorpius
- Other name
- λ Sco
- Catalogue number
- HIP 85927
- Distance
- ≈ 570 light-years
- Brightness
- Magnitude 1.63 naked-eye
- Star type
- B1.5 IV
- Colour
- blue
- Best seen from
- The Southern Hemisphere and lower northern latitudes
- Right ascension
- 17h 33m 37s
- Declination
- −37° 06′ 14″
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 Shaula?
Shaula 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
Shaula is about 570 light years away, so the light reaching you now set out around 1456. 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 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 Shaula mean?
It bore the traditional name Shaula, which comes from the Arabic الشولاء al-šawlā´ meaning 'the raised, as it is found in the tail of Scorpius, the scorpion.
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 Shaula?
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 53°N. It passes directly overhead at latitude 37°S. It stands highest at midnight in June, so June and July evenings are the best time to look. At magnitude 1.63 it is an easy naked-eye star from any reasonably dark spot.
Shaula belongs to Scorpius.
What does Shaula mean in astrology?
The classical fixed-star tradition: Ptolemy, the medieval Behenian lists, Robson’s 1923 compilation. Is silent on Shaula, 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, Shaula stands at 24° Sagittarius at the J2000 epoch, and the Sun passes that degree around 13 December 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 Shaula
- What does Shaula mean in astrology?
- The classical fixed-star tradition has no documented meaning for Shaula. Projected onto the zodiac, Shaula stands at 24° Sagittarius, and the Sun passes that degree each year around 13 December.
- Is Shaula the brightest star?
- Shaula shines at magnitude 1.63 · visible to the naked eye on a clear night, one of the few thousand stars with an officially recognised name.
- How far away is Shaula?
- Shaula is approximately 570 light-years from Earth. The light reaching us tonight began its journey around 570 years ago.
- Which constellation contains Shaula?
- Shaula is part of Scorpius.
- Can everyone see Shaula?
- 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 53°N. It passes directly overhead at latitude 37°S. It stands highest at midnight in June, so June and July evenings are the best time to look. At magnitude 1.63 it is an easy naked-eye star from any reasonably dark spot.
- Is dedicating Shaula an official astronomical renaming?
- No. Shaula 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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