Altair
By : Megan Link
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The name is Arabic and it means Aquila
This star is a white sub giant
This star is 17 light years away from earth
It is also almost ten times brighter than the sun
It is in the constellation of an eagle
You can see this star July through October
Information
• The name Altair also means The flying Eagle
• It is located in the lower left corner of the
Summer Triangle
• Also a white main sequence dwarf star
• Radiates in ultra violet waves more than
anything else
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This star has an abundance of iron
It is also full of elements other than hydrogen
It is also unusually bright for its shape
A helium and hydrogen mixture are at the
core
• It is a few hundred million years old
• It rotates at 210 kilometers per second
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It is shaped like a flattened ellipsoid
Altair is the 12th brightest star
Altair is in a Binary system
Altair is one of the Three White Stars
Its magnitude is 0.77
Altair is flaked by two other stars
The stars names are Tarazed and Alshain
Interesting stories
• “In classical mythology Aquila, and by extension
Altair as well, was an eagle favored by Zeus.
• In India, Altair with its two flanking stars, Beta
and Gamma (Tarazed and Alshain), are sometimes
thought to be the celestial footprints of the god
Vishnu.”
• I got this information from :
http://earthsky.org/brightest-stars/altair-thebluish-jewel-of-the-eagle
Interesting stories
• “One story common in China, Japan and Korea a young
herdsman (Altair) who falls in love with a celestial princess
(Vega), who weaves the fabric of heaven. The princess
became so enamored of the herdsman that she neglects her
weaving duties. This acts enrages the princess’s father, the
Celestial Emperor, who decrees that the herdsman must stay
away from his daughter, on the opposite side of the River.
The Emperor finally listened to the princess’s pleas,
however, and allowed the herdsman to cross the Celestial
River once per year, on the seventh day of the seventh
month.”
• I got this information from: http://earthsky.org/brighteststars/altair-the-bluish-jewel-of-the-eagle
Interesting facts
• In Japan, Altair is Hikoboshi, and Vega is
Orihime (or Tanabata). If it rains on the day of
the festival of Tanabata, it is said to be
Orihime’s tears because Hikoboshi could not
navigate the treacherous waters of the Celestial
River.”
• I got this information from:
http://earthsky.org/brightest-stars/altair-thebluish-jewel-of-the-eagle
Interesting facts
• “If it were substituted for our sun, at the distance the
sun is now, life on Earth would be doomed, as Altair
shines with 11 times the sun’s visible light. However,
with a surface temperature of about 7550 K degrees,
Altair isn’t much hotter than the sun (at 5800 K).
Higher temperatures usually reveal greater mass, at
least for Main Sequence stars, and Altair is thought to
be in excess of 1.7 times the mass of our sun.”
• I got this information from:
http://earthsky.org/brightest-stars/altair-the-bluishjewel-of-the-eagle
Interesting facts
• “Two other things that make Altair distinctive. The first
is its rapid rotation – this star requires only about 10
hours to spin once on its axis, in contrast to 24 hours
for our Earth to spin or roughly a month for our sun.
This rapid rotation tends to flatten the star a bit.
Estimates are roughly that Altair’s flattening is about 14
percent. The sun also is an oblate spheroid, although its
flattening is difficult to measure due to the low rotation
rate.”
• I got this information from:
http://earthsky.org/brightest-stars/altair-the-bluishjewel-of-the-eagle
Interesting facts
• “The second fact that makes Altair stand out is that it is a weak
and unusual variable star with as many as 9 different rates of
brightness waxings and wanings. The brightness variations are
too small to measure without sensitive instruments, but likely
are related to the high rotation rate.”
• I got this information from: http://earthsky.org/brighteststars/altair-the-bluish-jewel-of-the-eagle
Interesting fact
• “Vega marks radiant point of April’s Lyrid
meteor shower”
• I got this information from:
http://earthsky.org/brightest-stars/altair-thebluish-