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A dedicated star
Tania Borealis
white · Ursa Major · λ UMa
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, Tania Borealis becomes available again. Want it? Put the date in your calendar.
Tania Borealis at a glance
- Constellation
- Ursa Major
- Other name
- λ UMa
- Catalogue number
- HIP 50372
- Distance
- ≈ 138 light-years
- Brightness
- Magnitude 3.45 naked-eye
- Star type
- A2IV
- Colour
- white
- Best seen from
- The Northern Hemisphere and lower southern latitudes
- Right ascension
- 10h 17m 06s
- Declination
- +42° 54′ 52″
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 Tania Borealis?
Tania Borealis is a white subgiant. 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 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.
Tania Borealis drifts about 17.5 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 Tania Borealis tonight left in about 1888, some 138 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 Tania Borealis mean?
Tania comes from the Arabic phrase 'the Second Spring (of the Gazelle)'.
and Borealis (originally borealis) is Latin for 'the north side'.
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 Tania Borealis?
It is easy to see from most of the Northern Hemisphere. It can also appear from lower southern latitudes, but it never rises for observers south of about latitude 47°S. It passes directly overhead at latitude 43°N. It stands highest at midnight in February, so February and March evenings are the best time to look. At magnitude 3.45 it is a naked-eye star only under a dark sky, binoculars make it certain.
Tania Borealis belongs to Ursa Major.
What does Tania Borealis mean in astrology?
The classical fixed-star tradition: Ptolemy, the medieval Behenian lists, Robson’s 1923 compilation. Is silent on Tania Borealis, 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, Tania Borealis stands at 19° Leo at the J2000 epoch, and the Sun passes that degree around 9 August 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 Tania Borealis
- What does Tania Borealis mean in astrology?
- The classical fixed-star tradition has no documented meaning for Tania Borealis. Projected onto the zodiac, Tania Borealis stands at 19° Leo, and the Sun passes that degree each year around 9 August.
- Is Tania Borealis the brightest star?
- Tania Borealis shines at magnitude 3.45 · visible to the naked eye on a clear night, one of the few thousand stars with an officially recognised name.
- How far away is Tania Borealis?
- Tania Borealis is approximately 138 light-years from Earth. The light reaching us tonight began its journey around 138 years ago.
- Which constellation contains Tania Borealis?
- Tania Borealis is part of Ursa Major.
- Can everyone see Tania Borealis?
- It is easy to see from most of the Northern Hemisphere. It can also appear from lower southern latitudes, but it never rises for observers south of about latitude 47°S. It passes directly overhead at latitude 43°N. It stands highest at midnight in February, so February and March evenings are the best time to look. At magnitude 3.45 it is a naked-eye star only under a dark sky, binoculars make it certain.
- Is dedicating Tania Borealis an official astronomical renaming?
- No. Tania Borealis 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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