Shampagen's Astronomy

Giausar

Designations

  • Bayer: λ Dra
  • Flamsteed: 1 Dra
  • Hipparchos: HIP 56211

Data

  • Constellation: Draco
  • Apparent Magnitude: 3.85
  • Right Ascension (J2000): 11h31m21.62s
  • Declination (J2000): +69°20'07".1
  • Colour Index (B-V): 1.62
  • Distance: 377.50±6.12ly

Nomenclature

Giausar

The name comes from the Persian technical term Jawzahr, which designates a node of the moon's orbit, that is, one of the two points where the moon crosses the ecliptic plane in a lunar month. It was obviously misapplied to λ Dra, as it lies nowhere near the moon's orbit.

A possible reason for Giausar's location within Draco is by association with the ecliptic dragon of pre-Islamic Iranian origin. According to Hartner (1938), the term Jawzahr derived from Avestan Gao-čithra, an epithet for the moon meaning 'seed of the animals', which became Gōčihr of later Zoroastrian texts which Azarpay (1978) described as "the antagonist of the sun, moon, and stars". Azarpay (1978) also expounded that the Bundahišn, a compendium of Zoroastrian cosmological beliefs, described Gōčihr as a dragon with "its head in the Two Images [Gemini] and its tail in the Centaur [Sagittarius]". The head and tail then process in unison across the ecliptic such that "every ten years the tail reverts to where the head (was) and the head to where the tail (was)". While later Persians referred to the dragon as Jawzahr, the scientific Arabians referred to this dragon as al-Tinnīn, the same term used to the refer to the constellation of Draco. Thus, it is possible that Arabic writers became confused as to the correspondence of Jawzahr and al-Tinnīn and assigned the name Jawzahr to some star within Draco, which in turn became misspelled by Latin translators into the modern form Giausar for λ Dra.

Sources

  • IAU WGSN. IAU-Catalog of Star Names (CSN). link.
  • Stellarium Contributors. Stellarium Astronomy Software. link.
  • Kunitszch, Paul. Smart, Tim. A Dictionary of Modern Star Names (2006), pp. 35. link.
  • Hartner, Willy. The Pseudoplanetary Nodes of the Moon's Orbit in Hindu and Islamic Iconographies (1938), Ars Islamica, vol. 5, no. 2, pp. 112-154. link.
  • Azarpay, G. Kilmer, A. D. The Eclipse Dragon on an Arabic Frontispiece-Miniature (1978), Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. 98, no. 4, pp. 363-374. link.