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A dedicated star
Tabit
yellow-white · Orion · π3 Ori
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, Tabit becomes available again. Want it? Put the date in your calendar.
Tabit at a glance
- Constellation
- Orion
- Other name
- π3 Ori
- Catalogue number
- HIP 22449
- Distance
- ≈ 26 light-years
- Brightness
- Magnitude 3.19 naked-eye
- Star type
- F6V
- Colour
- yellow-white
- Best seen from
- Almost everywhere on Earth
- Right ascension
- 04h 49m 50s
- Declination
- +06° 57′ 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 Tabit?
Tabit is a yellow-white main-sequence star. Its surface runs about 6,000 to 7,500°C, a shade hotter than the Sun. 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.
A little brighter and a little shorter-lived than the Sun, and near the edge of the range where a planet could plausibly hold liquid water for long enough to matter.
A star of this class gets two to four thousand million years.
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.
Tabit moves noticeably against the background sky, about 46 arcseconds a century. The constellation it belongs to will not have quite this shape in ten thousand years.
The light you are looking at is old
The light you can see from Tabit left in 2000, 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 Tabit mean?
It bore the traditional name of 'Tabit', from the Arabic الثابت al-thābit 'the endurer (the fixed/constant one)'.
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 Tabit?
It sits 7° north of the celestial equator, so it clears the horizon everywhere short of latitude 83°S, in practice, every inhabited latitude on Earth. It passes directly overhead at latitude 7°N. It stands highest at midnight in December, so December and January evenings are the best time to look. At magnitude 3.19 it is a naked-eye star only under a dark sky, binoculars make it certain.
Tabit belongs to Orion.
What does Tabit mean in astrology?
The classical fixed-star tradition: Ptolemy, the medieval Behenian lists, Robson’s 1923 compilation. Is silent on Tabit, 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, Tabit stands at 11° Gemini at the J2000 epoch, and the Sun passes that degree around 1 June 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 Tabit
- What does Tabit mean in astrology?
- The classical fixed-star tradition has no documented meaning for Tabit. Projected onto the zodiac, Tabit stands at 11° Gemini, and the Sun passes that degree each year around 1 June.
- Is Tabit the brightest star?
- Tabit shines at magnitude 3.19 · visible to the naked eye on a clear night, one of the few thousand stars with an officially recognised name.
- How far away is Tabit?
- Tabit is approximately 26 light-years from Earth. The light reaching us tonight began its journey around 26 years ago.
- Which constellation contains Tabit?
- Tabit is part of Orion.
- Can everyone see Tabit?
- It sits 7° north of the celestial equator, so it clears the horizon everywhere short of latitude 83°S, in practice, every inhabited latitude on Earth. It passes directly overhead at latitude 7°N. It stands highest at midnight in December, so December and January evenings are the best time to look. At magnitude 3.19 it is a naked-eye star only under a dark sky, binoculars make it certain.
- Is dedicating Tabit an official astronomical renaming?
- No. Tabit 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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