The AsterNym star registry
Uruk
Uruk: the yellow-white star of Sagitta
yellow-white · Sagitta · HD 231701
Uruk is a yellow-white star, a near cousin of our own Sun's colour in the constellation Sagitta, one of the stars with a proper name recognised in the IAU Catalog of Star Names. At magnitude 8.97 it is a binocular or telescope object.
Most stars in the sky are anonymous points of light. Uruk is not. Some IAU-recognised names are ancient; others were adopted by the IAU only recently. Either way, the star already has a scientific identity, and a dedication attaches a human story to it.
Real star · Personal dedication · Recorded in the AsterNym registry
See what a dedicated page looks like: preview
Uruk at a glance
- Constellation
- Sagitta
- Other name
- HD 231701
- Catalogue number
- HIP 96078
- Distance
- ≈ 386 light-years
- Brightness
- Magnitude 8.97 telescope
- Star type
- F8V
- Colour
- yellow-white
- Best seen from
- Almost everywhere on Earth
- Right ascension
- 19h 32m 04s
- Declination
- +16° 28′ 27″
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 Uruk?
Uruk 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.
Uruk drifts about 6.6 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 Uruk tonight left in about 1640, some 386 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 sits at the edge of what an unaided eye can do, so finding it is a deliberate act rather than an accident.
What does the name Uruk mean?
===Early Dynastic, Akkadian, Ur III, and Old Babylonian period=== Dynastic categorizations are described solely from the Sumerian King List, which is of problematic historical accuracy; the organization might be analogous to Manetho's.
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.
What could a Uruk dedication represent?
Uruk is especially meaningful for someone who:
- · Deserves something older than any gift shop
- · Marks a beginning, an anniversary or a promise
- · Is remembered every time you look up
- · Has a light you want recorded somewhere permanent
Dedication idea
“For the one I think of when I find Sagitta in the sky.”
Where can you see Uruk?
It sits 16° north of the celestial equator, so it clears the horizon everywhere short of latitude 74°S, in practice, every inhabited latitude on Earth. It passes directly overhead at latitude 16°N. It stands highest at midnight in July, so July and August evenings are the best time to look. At magnitude 8.97 it sits below naked-eye reach; binoculars or a small telescope will find it.
Uruk belongs to Sagitta.
What does Uruk mean in astrology?
The classical fixed-star tradition: Ptolemy, the medieval Behenian lists, Robson’s 1923 compilation. Is silent on Uruk, 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, Uruk stands at 28° Capricorn at the J2000 epoch, and the Sun passes that degree around 17 January 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.
Dedicate Uruk to someone who matters
A flower fades. A card is eventually put away. A star gives your message a place in the sky.
from$29.95a year
Dedicate Uruk →Real star · your message · a page to share
Your Uruk dedication includes
- Your chosen dedication name
- Your personal message
- Uruk's real astronomical coordinates
- A shareable dedication page
- Its location on the AsterNym Galaxy Map
- An optional printable certificate and gift presentation
Uruk keeps its established astronomical name. Your dedication is a personal commemorative record within the AsterNym registry.
Frequently asked questions about Uruk
- What does Uruk mean in astrology?
- The classical fixed-star tradition has no documented meaning for Uruk. Projected onto the zodiac, Uruk stands at 28° Capricorn, and the Sun passes that degree each year around 17 January.
- Is Uruk the brightest star?
- Uruk shines at magnitude 8.97 · a binocular-and-telescope star, one of the few thousand stars with an officially recognised name.
- How far away is Uruk?
- Uruk is approximately 386 light-years from Earth. The light reaching us tonight began its journey around 386 years ago.
- Which constellation contains Uruk?
- Uruk is part of Sagitta.
- Can everyone see Uruk?
- It sits 16° north of the celestial equator, so it clears the horizon everywhere short of latitude 74°S, in practice, every inhabited latitude on Earth. It passes directly overhead at latitude 16°N. It stands highest at midnight in July, so July and August evenings are the best time to look. At magnitude 8.97 it sits below naked-eye reach; binoculars or a small telescope will find it.
- Is dedicating Uruk an official astronomical renaming?
- No. Uruk 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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