Altair

American  

[al-tair, -tahy^uhr, al-tair, -tahyuhr] / ˈæl tɛər, -taɪər, ælˈtɛər, -ˈtaɪər /

noun

1. a first-magnitude star in the constellation Aquila.

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Altair British  

/ ˈæltɛə /

noun

1. the brightest star in the constellation Aquila. Visual magnitude: 0.77; spectral type: A7V; distance: 16.8 light years

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Altair Scientific  

/ ăl-târ′,-tīr′ /

1. A bright white star in the constellation Aquila. Altair is a main-sequence star in the Hertzprung-Russell diagram. It is the 12th brightest star in the night sky, with an apparent magnitude of 0.77. Altair, along with Vega and Deneb, form the Summer Triangle asterism. Scientific name: Alpha Aquilae.

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Etymology

Origin of Altair

< Arabic ( al-nasr ) al-ṭā'ir (the) flying (eagle)

Example Sentences

The shift toward the personal began with the Altair 8800, a mail-order kit that lacked a screen or keyboard but proved a market existed for home hobbyists.

From The Wall Street Journal • Apr. 24, 2026

Rather than shun the growing underground of youthful hackers, he had been attending meetings of the Homebrew Computer Club, where young Altair and Commodore users met to trade their tiny software programs and swap lore.

From Los Angeles Times • Mar. 24, 2026

After Altair Jaspe moved from Venezuela to the Colombian capital, Bogotá, she was taken aback by the way she was addressed when she walked into any shop, cafe or doctor’s office.

From New York Times • Mar. 2, 2024

The sun takes a month to rotate once, and Altair is bigger, about twice the sun’s diameter, so material on its equator is screaming around at more than a million kilometers per hour.

From Scientific American • Jul. 14, 2023

That was when the magazine Popular Electronics ran a cover story on an extraordinary machine called the Altair 8800.

From "Outliers" by Malcolm Gladwell