Star profile
Tau Phoenicis
What is Tau Phoenicis
Tau Phoenicis is a yellow star nearly 600 light-years away, in the mythical bird that rises from its own ashes. Its brightness barely reaches the threshold of the human eye: under city skies it goes unnoticed, and only from very dark sites does it reveal itself. It is one of the very first entries in the Hipparcos catalogue, HIP 88, near the start of the list that mapped the position of more than a hundred thousand stars in our galaxy.
Where it is and when to see it
Tau Phoenicis lies in the southern celestial hemisphere. It is visible to the naked eye under a dark sky. Its best month of the year is August: 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 Tau Phoenicis
- Constellation
- Phoenix
- Apparent magnitude
- 5.71
- Distance
- 593.1 light years
- Coordinates (J2000)
- RA 0.269° · Dec -48.810°
- Catalogue
- HIP 88 · HD 224834
A symbolic commemorative gift: neither the signature nor the chosen name implies ownership of the star or recognition by the IAU.
Other stars in Phoenix
Phoenix has 39 stars in Stelvia's catalogue. Here are a few of them.
- AnkaaAlpha Phoenicis2.40
- Beta Phoenicis3.32
- Gamma Phoenicis3.41
- HIP 93135.57
- HIP 23835.67
- HIP 5225.70
- Xi Phoenicis5.72
- HIP 35835.80