Find it in the sky
Bright Altair, a corner of the Summer Triangle, with Tarazed and Alshain either side of it in a short line. On August evenings.
Celestial equator
Aquila
Aquila: Altair is the Summer Triangle’s nearest corner.
Best in August, around 9 p.m.No. 22 of the 88 constellations by areaBrightest star Altair (magnitude 0.76)8 stars in this guide
The drawings on these maps are the game’s, and don’t show exact positions in the sky.
Legend
In Greek myth the eagle carries Zeus’s thunderbolts. It is also the eagle that carried Ganymede, a son of a king of Troy, up to Olympus to be the gods’ cup-bearer.
Its stars
Magnitude says how bright a star looks from here: the smaller the number, the brighter the star.
Arin-majlep
Epsilon Aquilae
- Type
- Orange giant
- Distance
- about 179 light years
- Brightness
- magnitude 4.02
- Name
- Marshallese, “replica of the Big Eye”; the Big Eye is Altair
A binary whose two stars circle each other every 1,271 days.
Okab
Zeta Aquilae
- Type
- White star
- Distance
- about 83 light years
- Brightness
- magnitude 2.99
- Name
- “The tail of the eagle” (Arabic)
Astronomers use it as a standard to take the trace of Earth’s own air out of their spectra.
Guqi
Delta Aquilae
- Type
- Yellow-white star
- Distance
- about 51 light years
- Brightness
- magnitude 3.36
- Name
- “The drum flag” (Chinese)
A Delta Scuti star: its outer layers pulse, and its light with them.
Pagru
Eta Aquilae
- Type
- Yellow supergiant
- Distance
- about 886 light years
- Brightness
- magnitude 3.87
- Name
- “The corpse” (Akkadian), from the MUL.APIN tablets
A Cepheid: its brightness swings between magnitude 3.49 and 4.3 every 7.177 days.
Antinous
Theta Aquilae
- Type
- Blue-white giant
- Distance
- about 286 light years
- Brightness
- magnitude 3.24
- Name
- After the old constellation Antinous, named in Hadrian’s reign
A pair of stars that circle each other every 17.1 days.
Alshain
Beta Aquilae
- Type
- Yellow star
- Distance
- about 44 light years
- Brightness
- magnitude 3.87
- Name
- “The scale beam” (Persian)
Since 1943 its spectrum has been one of the anchors other stars are classified by.
Tarazed
Gamma Aquilae
- Type
- Orange bright giant
- Distance
- about 395 light years
- Brightness
- magnitude 2.72
- Name
- “The scale beam” (Persian), the same root as Alshain
A swollen giant: its radius is 92 times the Sun’s.
Altair
Alpha Aquilae
- Type
- White star
- Distance
- about 17 light years
- Brightness
- magnitude 0.76
- Name
- “The flying eagle” (Arabic)
It spins so fast that its radius is over 20% larger at the equator than at the poles.
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Sources: constellation areas follow the International Astronomical Union (IAU) boundaries; star values come from Wikipedia’s articles, based on Hipparcos and Gaia; the Sun’s dates come from EarthSky. Distances are rounded.