Gamma Aquilae is a relatively young star with an age of about 270 million years.[6] Nevertheless, it has reached a stage of its evolution where it has consumed the hydrogen at its core and expanded into what is termed a bright giant star, with a stellar classification of K3 II.[3] The star is now burning helium into carbon in its core. After it has finished generating energy through nuclear fusion, Gamma Aquilae will become a white dwarf.[11]
The star has an estimated 3.5 times the mass of the Sun and has expanded to 92 times the Sun's radius. It is radiating over 2100 times the luminosity of the Sun. An effective temperature of 4098 K[6] in its outer envelope gives it the orange hue typical of K-type stars.[12] A 1991 catalogue of photometry reported that Gamma Aquilae showed some variation in its brightness, but this has not been confirmed.[13]
Emission nebula
Gamma Aquilae is located just 7' from the center of an emission nebula, which has been first reported in 2023 by Stefan Ziegenbalg. The star is unlikely to be the ionization source of this nebula.[14]
It bore the traditional name Tarazed,[11] which may derive from the Persian شاهين ترازو šāhin tarāzu "the beam of the scale", referring to an asterism of the Scale, Alpha, Beta and Gamma Aquilae. (Persian šāhīn means "royal falcon", "beam", and "pointer", and gave its name (as "falcon") to Beta Aquilae.) In 2016, the International Astronomical Union organized a Working Group on Star Names (WGSN)[15] to catalogue and standardize proper names for stars. The WGSN approved the name Tarazed for this star on 21 August 2016 and it is now so entered in the IAU Catalog of Star Names.[10]
In the catalogue of stars in the Calendarium of Al Achsasi Al Mouakket, this star was designated Menkib al Nesr (منكب ألنسر - mankib al-nasr), which was translated into Latin as Humerus Vulturis, meaning 'the eagle's shoulder'.[16]
^ abcdCousins, A. W. J. (1984), "Standardization of Broadband Photometry of Equatorial Standards", South African Astronomical Observatory Circulars, 8: 59, Bibcode:1984SAAOC...8...59C
^McWilliam, Andrew (December 1990), "High-resolution spectroscopic survey of 671 GK giants. I - Stellar atmosphere parameters and abundances", Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series, 74: 1075–1128, Bibcode:1990ApJS...74.1075M, doi:10.1086/191527
^Bernacca, P. L.; Perinotto, M. (1970), "A catalogue of stellar rotational velocities", Contributi Osservatorio Astronomico di Padova in Asiago, 239 (1): 1, Bibcode:1970CoAsi.239....1B
^Kornilov, V. G.; Volkov, I. M.; Zakharov, A. I.; Kozyreva, V. S.; Kornilova, L. N.; Krutyakov, A. N.; Krylov, A. V.; Kusakin, A. V.; Leont'Ev, S. E.; Mironov, A. V.; Moshkalev, V. G.; Pogrosheva, T. M.; Sementsov, V. N.; Khaliullin, Kh. F. (1991). "Catalogue of WBVR-magnitudes of bright stars of the northern sky". Trudy Gosudarstvennogo Astronomicheskogo Instituta. 63: 1. Bibcode:1991TrSht..63....1K.
^Mudrooroo (1994). Aboriginal mythology : an A-Z spanning the history of aboriginal mythology from the earliest legends to the present day. London: HarperCollins. p. 4. ISBN978-1-85538-306-7.