Beta Aquilae
star in the constellation Aquila
Beta Aquilae is a triple star system in the equatorial constellation of Aquila. Its name is a Bayer designation that is Latinized from β Aquilae, and abbreviated Beta Aql or β Aql. This system is visible to the naked eye as a point-like source with an apparent visual magnitude of 3.87. Based on parallax measurements, it is located at a distance of 44.4 light-years. It is drifting closer to the Sun with a radial velocity of −40 km/s, and is predicted to approach to within 27 light-years (8.4 pc) in roughly 207,000 years.
Its two visible components are designated Beta Aquilae A and B. The former is formally named Alshain , the traditional name for the system.
Nomenclature
β Aquilae (Latinised to Beta Aquilae) is the system's Bayer designation. The designations of the two components as Beta Aquilae A and B derive from the convention used by the Washington Multiplicity Catalog (WMC) for multiple star systems, and adopted by the International Astronomical Union (IAU).
The system bore the traditional name Alshain, derived from the Persian shāhīn-i tarazu "the scale beam", the Persian name for the asterism of α, β and γ Aquilae, itself a translation of the Arabic al-mizan "the balance". The name Tarazed for γ Aquilae is derived from the same Persian term.
“Beta Aquilae” enters the record as star in the constellation Aquila. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Beta, Aquilae and star can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q78181697. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Beta Aquilae” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.