Preview. This is a sample dedication, shown so you can see what a dedicated star page looks like.
A dedicated star
Zibal
white · Eridanus · ζ Eri
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, Zibal becomes available again. Want it? Put the date in your calendar.
Zibal at a glance
- Constellation
- Eridanus
- Other name
- ζ Eri
- Catalogue number
- HIP 15197
- Distance
- ≈ 110 light-years
- Brightness
- Magnitude 4.80 naked-eye
- Star type
- A5m
- Colour
- white
- Best seen from
- Almost everywhere on Earth
- Right ascension
- 03h 15m 50s
- Declination
- −08° 49′ 11″
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 Zibal?
Zibal is a white star. 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.
Zibal drifts about 4.6 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 you can see from Zibal left in 1916, 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.
Where can you see Zibal?
It sits 9° south of the celestial equator, so it clears the horizon everywhere short of latitude 81°N, in practice, every inhabited latitude on Earth. It passes directly overhead at latitude 9°S. It stands highest at midnight in November, so November and December evenings are the best time to look. At magnitude 4.80 it is a naked-eye star only under a dark sky, binoculars make it certain.
Zibal belongs to Eridanus.
What does Zibal mean in astrology?
The classical fixed-star tradition: Ptolemy, the medieval Behenian lists, Robson’s 1923 compilation. Is silent on Zibal, 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, Zibal stands at 13° Taurus at the J2000 epoch, and the Sun passes that degree around 3 May 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 Zibal
- What does Zibal mean in astrology?
- The classical fixed-star tradition has no documented meaning for Zibal. Projected onto the zodiac, Zibal stands at 13° Taurus, and the Sun passes that degree each year around 3 May.
- Is Zibal the brightest star?
- Zibal shines at magnitude 4.80 · visible to the naked eye on a clear night, one of the few thousand stars with an officially recognised name.
- How far away is Zibal?
- Zibal is approximately 110 light-years from Earth. The light reaching us tonight began its journey around 110 years ago.
- Which constellation contains Zibal?
- Zibal is part of Eridanus.
- Can everyone see Zibal?
- It sits 9° south of the celestial equator, so it clears the horizon everywhere short of latitude 81°N, in practice, every inhabited latitude on Earth. It passes directly overhead at latitude 9°S. It stands highest at midnight in November, so November and December evenings are the best time to look. At magnitude 4.80 it is a naked-eye star only under a dark sky, binoculars make it certain.
- Is dedicating Zibal an official astronomical renaming?
- No. Zibal 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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