Preview. This is a sample dedication, shown so you can see what a dedicated star page looks like.
A dedicated star
Sheratan
white · Aries · β Ari
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, Sheratan becomes available again. Want it? Put the date in your calendar.
Sheratan at a glance
- Constellation
- Aries
- Other name
- β Ari
- Catalogue number
- HIP 8903
- Distance
- ≈ 60 light-years
- Brightness
- Magnitude 2.64 naked-eye
- Star type
- A5 V
- Colour
- white
- Best seen from
- Almost everywhere on Earth
- Right ascension
- 01h 54m 39s
- Declination
- +20° 48′ 30″
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 Sheratan?
Sheratan is a white main-sequence star. Its surface runs around 7,500 to 10,000°C, hot enough to look white or blue-white to the eye. 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.
These are the classic bright white stars. Sirius and Vega are both this kind, and they are the reason people describe stars as white when most of the galaxy's stars are actually red and too faint to see.
A star of this class gets roughly a thousand million years, a tenth of what the Sun gets.
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.
The light you are looking at is old
The light you can see from Sheratan left in 1966, 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 comfortably visible without equipment on a decent night.
What does the name Sheratan mean?
The traditional name, Sheratan (or Sharatan, Sheratim), in full Al Sharatan, is from the Arabic الشرطان aš-šaraţān "the two signs", a reference to the star having marked the northern vernal equinox together with Gamma Arietis several thousand years ago.
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 Sheratan?
It sits 21° north of the celestial equator, so it clears the horizon everywhere short of latitude 69°S, in practice, every inhabited latitude on Earth. It passes directly overhead at latitude 21°N. It stands highest at midnight in October, so October and November evenings are the best time to look. At magnitude 2.64 it is an easy naked-eye star from any reasonably dark spot.
Sheratan belongs to Aries.
What does Sheratan mean in astrology?
The classical fixed-star tradition: Ptolemy, the medieval Behenian lists, Robson’s 1923 compilation. Is silent on Sheratan, 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, Sheratan stands at 3° Taurus at the J2000 epoch, and the Sun passes that degree around 23 April 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 Sheratan
- What does Sheratan mean in astrology?
- The classical fixed-star tradition has no documented meaning for Sheratan. Projected onto the zodiac, Sheratan stands at 3° Taurus, and the Sun passes that degree each year around 23 April.
- Is Sheratan the brightest star?
- Sheratan shines at magnitude 2.64 · visible to the naked eye on a clear night, one of the few thousand stars with an officially recognised name.
- How far away is Sheratan?
- Sheratan is approximately 60 light-years from Earth. The light reaching us tonight began its journey around 60 years ago.
- Which constellation contains Sheratan?
- Sheratan is part of Aries.
- Can everyone see Sheratan?
- It sits 21° north of the celestial equator, so it clears the horizon everywhere short of latitude 69°S, in practice, every inhabited latitude on Earth. It passes directly overhead at latitude 21°N. It stands highest at midnight in October, so October and November evenings are the best time to look. At magnitude 2.64 it is an easy naked-eye star from any reasonably dark spot.
- Is dedicating Sheratan an official astronomical renaming?
- No. Sheratan 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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