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Reading the Position: Capricorn 25 Degrees 50 Minutes, the Second Ostrich

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Reading the Position: Capricorn 25 Degrees 50 Minutes, the Second Ostrich

The atlas records this star at Capricorn 25 degrees 50 minutes, projected from Aquila, well north of the ecliptic.

It is the further of the two entries carrying the dual name al-thalimayn, the two ostriches. Its partner sits at Capricorn 17 degrees 20 minutes, exactly eight and a half degrees back, so the pair spans more than a quarter of a sign. That separation is what makes them a genuine pair of stars sharing one dual name rather than a duplicate entry, which is the other pattern in this atlas and looks quite different: a duplicate shares a sign, a degree and a minute.

Being deep in the sign, this is among the stars in the table closest to leaving it. On a uniform precession of about fifty seconds of arc a year, one degree in roughly seventy two years, and taking the recorded value for epoch 2000, it entered Capricorn around the middle of the second century of the common era and will cross into Aquarius in something like three hundred years. It has spent longer in the sign than any of the other Aquila entries here and will be the first of them to leave.

The ostrich names belong to the indigenous Arabian sky-lore that survived alongside the translated Greek figures, which is why one region of sky carries both an eagle and a pair of birds coming down to the Milky Way to drink.

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Source Divinity Atlas Long-Form Articles, First Edition
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Divinity Atlas Long-Form Articles, First Edition
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