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A dedicated star
Tegmine
golden · Cancer · ζ1 Cnc
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, Tegmine becomes available again. Want it? Put the date in your calendar.
Tegmine at a glance
- Constellation
- Cancer
- Other name
- ζ1 Cnc
- Catalogue number
- HIP 40167
- Distance
- ≈ 82 light-years
- Brightness
- Magnitude 5.24 naked-eye
- Star type
- G0V
- Colour
- golden
- Best seen from
- Almost everywhere on Earth
- Right ascension
- 08h 12m 13s
- Declination
- +17° 38′ 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 Tegmine?
Tegmine is a yellow main-sequence star. Its surface runs about 5,500°C, near enough the Sun's own surface temperature. 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.
This is the Sun's class. Looking at a star like this is the closest you get to seeing what our own star looks like from outside, which is a stranger thought than it first sounds.
A star of this class gets around ten thousand million years, and the Sun is halfway through its own.
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.
Tegmine drifts about 15.4 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 you can see from Tegmine left in 1944, 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 sits at the edge of what an unaided eye can do, so finding it is a deliberate act rather than an accident.
Where can you see Tegmine?
It sits 18° north of the celestial equator, so it clears the horizon everywhere short of latitude 72°S, in practice, every inhabited latitude on Earth. It passes directly overhead at latitude 18°N. It stands highest at midnight in January, so January and February evenings are the best time to look. At magnitude 5.24 it is a naked-eye star only under a dark sky, binoculars make it certain.
Tegmine belongs to Cancer.
What does Tegmine mean in astrology?
The classical fixed-star tradition: Ptolemy, the medieval Behenian lists, Robson’s 1923 compilation. Is silent on Tegmine, 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, Tegmine stands at 1° Leo at the J2000 epoch, and the Sun passes that degree around 21 July 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 Tegmine
- What does Tegmine mean in astrology?
- The classical fixed-star tradition has no documented meaning for Tegmine. Projected onto the zodiac, Tegmine stands at 1° Leo, and the Sun passes that degree each year around 21 July.
- Is Tegmine the brightest star?
- Tegmine shines at magnitude 5.24 · visible to the naked eye on a clear night, one of the few thousand stars with an officially recognised name.
- How far away is Tegmine?
- Tegmine is approximately 82 light-years from Earth. The light reaching us tonight began its journey around 82 years ago.
- Which constellation contains Tegmine?
- Tegmine is part of Cancer.
- Can everyone see Tegmine?
- It sits 18° north of the celestial equator, so it clears the horizon everywhere short of latitude 72°S, in practice, every inhabited latitude on Earth. It passes directly overhead at latitude 18°N. It stands highest at midnight in January, so January and February evenings are the best time to look. At magnitude 5.24 it is a naked-eye star only under a dark sky, binoculars make it certain.
- Is dedicating Tegmine an official astronomical renaming?
- No. Tegmine 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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