I’ll go with the same choice as dogbutler and Peter Morris.
I’d type it out but I’m not going to be the one.
That was my first thought.
How about Fomalhaut (mouth of the southern fish/whale)?
Brian
[derail-nitpick]Ra’s al-Ghul, is “the Demon’s Head”, not “the Demon Star” (or, more literally, “the Head of the Ghoul”).[/derail-nitpick]
Algol is a pretty close transliteration of the Arabic name, al-ghul (the Ghoul). And…it occurs to me that DPRK might have been making a joke in conflating the Batman villain Ra’s al-Ghul with the actual star Algol/al-Ghul, in which case…sorry. Whoosh.
More specifically, a lot of them start with “al-”, the Arabic definite article. Aldebaran, for example, is from al-dabaraan, “The Follower”. Arcturus, on the other hand, isn’t from Arabic, but from ancient Greek.
Oddly, Albireo appears to be derived from successive translation and copying errors. Al-bireo isn’t Arabic; at some point, during the convolutions of translating and copying between Greek, Arabic, and Latin, the star’s name was contorted into the Latin phrase “ab ireo”, which someone took as a copyist’s error for an Arabic name, and they “corrected” it to al-bireo, or Albireo.
Another Algol fan. Reasons: Old school computer person. The “ghoul” thing. Early example of a variable star.
Deneb’s good too.
The Sun.
No love for Procyon?
Can I change mine to Shannon Elizabeth?
Absolutely no joke, that’s the name of the star! In Arabic, anyway. You are right: رأس means “head”, therefore, the Head of the Demon (Ghoul).
Sounds like something Lovecraft made up, but, no, it’s been emanating its astrological vibes since forever.
ETA I occasionally have nightmares about Eta Carinae
UY Scuti is a bright star in the constellation Scutum. Scutum (plural scuta) is the Latin word for shield (scut in Romanian). Since scuti is its genitive form, the name of the star means UY of Scutum.
I’m fond of the name Alcyone, one of the Pleiades. I often use it as a character name in RPGs.
Huh. Ignorance fought. I had always thought the Arabic name was simply “al-ghul”, but several sources I just looked at agree with you, the actual name of the star in Arabic is “ra’s al-ghul”.
Another vote for Antares. I just like the way it sounds.
But my favorite constellation is Orion. Whenever I find myself looking at the night sky, thinking deep thoughts about infinity, life, the meaning of meaning, I invariably gaze into Orion (if it happens to be up, obviously). In some vague way that’s where “eternity” or “It” is.
I may have a new favorite! I will fire up SkyView Lite and be looking for it tonight. Eta Carinae sounds interesting too. Are either visible from North America now?
Eg from Chicago, Algol should rise tonight around 8:13 p.m. in the northeast and be high in the sky overhead around 5:40 am or so, basically you can’t miss it, but Eta Carinae is not visible that far north.
Some Gremlin riding a Cricket did it?
Twinkle²