Star
Altair
White star · A7IV-V
α Aquilae · Aquila
Shown in its true colour — like most stars, it is too far away to photograph as more than a point of light.
Altair is the brightest star in the equatorial constellation of Aquila and the twelfth-brightest star in the night sky. It has the Bayer designation Alpha Aquilae, which is Latinised from α Aquilae and abbreviated Alpha Aql or α Aql. Altair is an A-type main-sequence star with an apparent visual magnitude of 0.77 and is one of the vertices of the Summer Triangle asterism; the other two vertices are marked by Deneb and Vega. It is located at a distance of 16.7 light-years from the Sun. Altair is currently in the G-cloud—a nearby interstellar cloud formed from an accumulation of gas and dust.
Description from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0).
In your sky
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Key facts
Distance
~16.7 light-years
Apparent mag.
+0.76
Spectral type
A7IV-V
Luminosity
11.4 × Sun
Absolute mag.
+2.21
Catalogue
HIP 97649
Spectral type
A7IV-V
True colour from its B–V index (0.22): a surface around 8000 K.
Did you know
- Altair is also known as α Aquilae.
- Its spectral type A7IV-V marks it as a white star.
- It lies in the constellation Aquila.
