Altair By : Megan Link

Information 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

Information 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

Information It is shaped like a flattened ellipsoid Altair is the 12 th 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 : bluish-jewel-of-the-eagle bluish-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: stars/altair-the-bluish-jewel-of-the-eaglehttp://earthsky.org/brightest- stars/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: bluish-jewel-of-the-eagle bluish-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: jewel-of-the-eagle jewel-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: jewel-of-the-eagle jewel-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: stars/altair-the-bluish-jewel-of-the-eaglehttp://earthsky.org/brightest- stars/altair-the-bluish-jewel-of-the-eagle

Interesting fact “Vega marks radiant point of April’s Lyrid meteor shower” I got this information from: bluish- bluish-