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Star profile

Pi Ara

3D likeness based on its real data · class A · ~8,500 K

What is Pi Ara

Pi Arae is a white main-sequence to subgiant star 145 light-years away, almost twice the Sun's mass and thirteen times more luminous. Just 55 arcminutes to her north lies NGC 6397, one of the closest globular clusters to Earth: a hundred thousand ancient stars packed into a compact ball. From our perspective Pi seems to stand guard at the entrance of that old swarm.

Where it is and when to see it

Pi 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.

Find it on the sky map

It opens in your browser. Free, no account, nothing to install.

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

If you don't have an account yet, we'll ask for an email to confirm it's you: we send you a link and that's it, no password.

Write my signature

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 Pi Ara

Constellation
Ara
Apparent magnitude
5.25
Distance
145.4 light years
Coordinates (J2000)
RA 264.523° · Dec -54.500°
Catalogue
HIP 86305 · HD 159492

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.

See all 43 stars in Ara