Alpha Sagittae
Encyclopedia
Alpha Sagittae is a star
Star
A star is a massive, luminous sphere of plasma held together by gravity. At the end of its lifetime, a star can also contain a proportion of degenerate matter. The nearest star to Earth is the Sun, which is the source of most of the energy on Earth...

 in the constellation
Constellation
In modern astronomy, a constellation is an internationally defined area of the celestial sphere. These areas are grouped around asterisms, patterns formed by prominent stars within apparent proximity to one another on Earth's night sky....

 Sagitta
Sagitta
Sagitta is a constellation. Its name is Latin for "arrow", and it should not be confused with the larger constellation Sagittarius, the archer. Although ancient, it is insignificant, for it has no star brighter than the 4th magnitude and is the third smallest of all constellations...

. It has the traditional name Sham or Alsahm which comes to us from Arabic سهم sahm and means Arrow, the name formerly having been applied to the whole constellation.

In Chinese
Chinese language
The Chinese language is a language or language family consisting of varieties which are mutually intelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages...

, , meaning Left Flag
Ox (Chinese constellation)
The Ox mansion is one of the Twenty-eight mansions of the Chinese constellations. It is one of the northern mansions of the Black Tortoise.-Asterisms:...

, refers to an asterism consisting of α Sagittae, β Sagittae
Beta Sagittae
Beta Sagittae is a G-type giant star in the constellation of Sagitta. It has an apparent visual magnitude of approximately 4.387....

, δ Sagittae, ζ Sagittae, γ Sagittae, 13 Sagittae, 11 Sagittae, 14 Sagittae
14 Sagittae
14 Sagittae or HD 190229 is a star, in the Aquila constellation.-References:* *...

 and ρ Aquilae
Rho Aquilae
Rho Aquilae is a star in the constellation Delphinus – it moved across the border from Aquila into Delphinus in 1992. It has the traditional name Tso Ke, from the Mandarin 左旗 zuǒqí meaning "the left flag"....

. Consequently, ρ Aquilae itself is known as

α Sge is a yellow bright giant star of apparent magnitude
Apparent magnitude
The apparent magnitude of a celestial body is a measure of its brightness as seen by an observer on Earth, adjusted to the value it would have in the absence of the atmosphere...

 +4.37 and spectral class
Stellar classification
In astronomy, stellar classification is a classification of stars based on their spectral characteristics. The spectral class of a star is a designated class of a star describing the ionization of its chromosphere, what atomic excitations are most prominent in the light, giving an objective measure...

 G1 II about 475 light years from Earth. It has a luminosity
Luminosity
Luminosity is a measurement of brightness.-In photometry and color imaging:In photometry, luminosity is sometimes incorrectly used to refer to luminance, which is the density of luminous intensity in a given direction. The SI unit for luminance is candela per square metre.The luminosity function...

 340 times that of the Sun
Sun
The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is almost perfectly spherical and consists of hot plasma interwoven with magnetic fields...

 with a surface temperature
Temperature
Temperature is a physical property of matter that quantitatively expresses the common notions of hot and cold. Objects of low temperature are cold, while various degrees of higher temperatures are referred to as warm or hot...

 of 5400 kelvin
Kelvin
The kelvin is a unit of measurement for temperature. It is one of the seven base units in the International System of Units and is assigned the unit symbol K. The Kelvin scale is an absolute, thermodynamic temperature scale using as its null point absolute zero, the temperature at which all...

s. The star's radius is roughly 20 times solar while its mass is 4 times the solar mass
Solar mass
The solar mass , , is a standard unit of mass in astronomy, used to indicate the masses of other stars and galaxies...

.
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