Star profile
Alpha Indus
What is Alpha Indus
The alpha star of Indus is a mature orange giant, swollen to nearly ten times the Sun's radius and burning at around 4,900 kelvin. Only 99 light-years away, it is one of the closest of its kind and the brightest in a constellation devised in the sixteenth century to honour the peoples of the South Pacific. Two red dwarfs trail it at more than two thousand astronomical units, too faint to be seen from here.
Where it is and when to see it
Alpha Indus lies in the southern celestial hemisphere. It is visible to the naked eye under a dark sky. Its best month of the year is July: the Sun sits at the opposite point of the sky and the star culminates around midnight. How high it climbs above the horizon depends on the latitude you watch from.
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The signature wall
Stelvia's sky works like a signature wall: anyone can leave their name and a message on a real star, and that signature goes up on the map for everyone to read. Signing is free.
A signature without a lock can be replaced by someone else's. The lock makes the signature permanent and lets you choose a symbolic name for the star, always shown next to the star's catalogue identifier. How the lock works
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A public signature from a real person. The chosen name is a symbolic denomination within Stelvia, with no official standing or IAU recognition: the sky is not for sale and belongs to no one.
Astronomical data for Alpha Indus
- Constellation
- Indus
- Apparent magnitude
- 3.11
- Distance
- 98.3 light years
- Coordinates (J2000)
- RA 309.392° · Dec -47.292°
- Catalogue
- HIP 101772 · HD 196171
A symbolic commemorative gift: neither the signature nor the chosen name implies ownership of the star or recognition by the IAU.
Other stars in Indus
Indus has 19 stars in Stelvia's catalogue. Here are a few of them.
- Beta Indus3.67
- Theta Indus4.39
- Delta Indus4.40
- Eta Indus4.51
- Epsilon Indus4.69
- Zeta Indus4.90
- Iota Indus5.06
- Mu Indus5.17