Star profile
Iota Ara
Variable starWhat is Iota Ara
ι Arae burns blue-white within the southern Altar, some 935 light-years away. It is a variable Be star: its brightness flickers slightly every 13.4 hours while a gaseous disc forms and dissolves around its equator. With 8.3 solar masses, it radiates nearly eleven thousand times the Sun's light at a searing 20,000 K. A restless young star, marked by the violence of its own rotation.
Where it is and when to see it
Iota Ara lies in the southern celestial hemisphere. It is visible to the naked eye under a dark sky. Its best month of the year is June: 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 Iota Ara
- Constellation
- Ara
- Apparent magnitude
- 5.21
- Distance
- 934.7 light years
- Coordinates (J2000)
- RA 260.817° · Dec -47.468°
- Catalogue
- HIP 85079 · HD 157042
A symbolic commemorative gift: neither the signature nor the chosen name implies ownership of the star or recognition by the IAU.
Other stars in Ara
Ara has 43 stars in Stelvia's catalogue. Here are a few of them.
- Beta Ara2.84
- Alpha Ara2.84
- Zeta Ara3.12
- Lambda Ara4.76
- CervantesMu Ara5.12
- Kappa Ara5.19
- Pi Ara5.25
- Epsilon 2 Ara5.27