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Origin[]
The star Altair. Photo taken from NASA.
Altair is the brightest star in the constellation Aquila and the twelfth brightest star in the night sky. It is currently in the G-cloud. 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 (the other two vertices are marked by Deneb and Vega).Altair rotates rapidly, with a velocity at the equator of approximately 286 km/s. A study with the Palomar Testbed Interferometer revealed that Altair is not spherical, but is flattened at the poles due to its high rate of rotation.[ Other interferometric studies with multiple telescopes, operating in the infrared, have imaged and confirmed this phenomenon. The name Altair has been used since medieval times. It is an abbreviation of the Arabic phrase (English: The flying eagle). The term Al Nesr Al Tair appeared in Al Achsasi Al Mouakket catalogue, which was translated into Latin as Vultur Volans. This name was applied by the Arabs to the asterism of α, β, and γ Aquilae and probably goes back to the ancient Babylonians and Sumerians, who called α Aquilae the eagle star. The spelling Atair has also been used. Medieval astrolabes of England and Western Europe depicted Altair and Vega as birds.