A dedicated star
Spica
blue · Virgo · α Vir
Dedicated to
Megan Lawson
by Rebecca Lawson · August 14, 2026
“For the dream you turned into reality. May your new business grow, flourish, and shine as brilliantly as Spica.”
This dedication
- Dedicated to
- Megan Lawson
- Dedicated by
- Rebecca Lawson
- Recorded
- August 14, 2026
- Held until
- August 14, 2027
When this dedication ends, Spica becomes available again. Want it? Put the date in your calendar.
Spica at a glance
- Constellation
- Virgo
- Other name
- α Vir
- Catalogue number
- HIP 65474
- Distance
- ≈ 250 light-years
- Brightness
- Magnitude 0.98 naked-eye
- Star type
- B1 III-IV
- Colour
- blue
- Best seen from
- Almost everywhere on Earth
- Right ascension
- 13h 25m 12s
- Declination
- −11° 09′ 41″
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 Spica?
Spica is a blue-white giant. 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.
Its colour is not the whole story. A blue-white star still in the steady part of its life would burn for tens of millions of years. This one is past that stage, and it is cool at the surface because it has swollen outward, not because it was born this way.
It is a giant, which is what a star becomes when it exhausts the hydrogen in its core. It has swollen outward and cooled at the surface, and it is now brighter than it ever was as a young star. The Sun will do this too, in about five thousand million years.
The light you are looking at is old
The light arriving from Spica tonight left in about 1776, some 250 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 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 Spica mean?
Spica is Latin for “ear of wheat.” The star's association with harvest is older still: it appears in Babylonian records as the Furrow.
Where can you see Spica?
It sits 11° south of the celestial equator, so it clears the horizon everywhere short of latitude 79°N, in practice, every inhabited latitude on Earth. It passes directly overhead at latitude 11°S. It stands highest at midnight in April, so April and May evenings are the best time to look. At magnitude 0.98 it is bright enough to hold its own over city lights.
Spica belongs to Virgo, where it is the brightest star.
What does Spica mean in astrology?
The ear of wheat in the Virgin's hand, and in the tradition one of the most fortunate stars in the sky: nature of Venus and Mars: gifts, talent, protection and success that arrives as if given. A Behenian star, worn for abundance.
Projected onto the zodiac the way fixed-star astrology reads any star, Spica stands at 23° Libra at the J2000 epoch, and the Sun passes that degree around 13 October 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 Spica
- What does Spica mean in astrology?
- The ear of wheat in the Virgin's hand, and in the tradition one of the most fortunate stars in the sky: nature of Venus and Mars: gifts, talent, protection and success that arrives as if given. A Behenian star, worn for abundance. Projected onto the zodiac, Spica stands at 23° Libra, and the Sun passes that degree each year around 13 October.
- Is Spica the brightest star?
- Spica shines at magnitude 0.98 · visible to the naked eye on a clear night, one of the few thousand stars with an officially recognised name.
- How far away is Spica?
- Spica is approximately 250 light-years from Earth. The light reaching us tonight began its journey around 250 years ago.
- Which constellation contains Spica?
- Spica is the brightest star in Virgo.
- Can everyone see Spica?
- It sits 11° south of the celestial equator, so it clears the horizon everywhere short of latitude 79°N, in practice, every inhabited latitude on Earth. It passes directly overhead at latitude 11°S. It stands highest at midnight in April, so April and May evenings are the best time to look. At magnitude 0.98 it is bright enough to hold its own over city lights.
- Is dedicating Spica an official astronomical renaming?
- No. Spica 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.
Explore nearby stars
