Altair ( Alpha Aquilae, Alpha Aql, α Aquilae, α Aql, Atair ) is the brightest star in the constellation Aquila and the twelfth brightest star in the night sky.

A study with the Palomar Testbed Interferometer revealed that Altair is not spherical, but is flattened at the poles due to its high rate of rotation.

Altair is located 16. 7 light-years ( 5. 13 parsecs ) from Earth and is one of the closest stars visible to the naked eye.

This rapid rotation forces Altair to be oblate ; its equatorial diameter is over 20 percent greater than its polar diameter.

Altair is one of the few stars for which a direct image has been obtained.

In this image, North ( the direction towards the North Celestial Pole ) is up and East is left, and the white line is the rotational axis of Altair.

Altair is thus known as (,, or more literally, Riverdrum 2 ).

The Japanese festival, in which Altair is known as, is based on this legend.

The Russian-made Beriev Be-200 Altair seaplane is also named after the star.

The 1956 science fiction film Forbidden Planet is set on Altair 4, a presumed planet of the star.

Altair is the name of three United States navy ships:, and.

In Chinese mythology, there is a love story of Qi Xi () in which Niu Lang (, Altair ) and his two children ( β and γ Aquilae ) are separated from their mother Zhi Nü (, lit.

** Altair 8800 is released, sparking the microcomputer revolution.

There is a rather abrupt onset of X-ray emission around spectral type A7-F0, with a large range of luminosities developing across spectral class F. Altair is spectral type A7V and Vega is A0V.

Today the Altair is widely recognized as the spark that led to the microcomputer revolution of the next few years: The computer bus designed for the Altair was to become a de facto standard in the form of the S-100 bus, and the first programming language for the machine was Microsoft's founding product, Altair BASIC.

Altair ( formerly known as the Lunar Surface Access Module, LSAM ) would have been the main transport vehicle for lunar-bound astronauts.

The Earth Departure Stage ( EDS ) was the main propulsion system that would have sent the Ares V Orion / Altair upper stage from low Earth orbit to the Moon.

Like that of the Apollo Program, Constellation program will involve its main vehicle, the Orion spacecraft, flying missions in low earth orbit ( LEO ) with an emphasis of servicing the International Space Station, and in conjunction with the Altair and Earth Departure Stage, on flights to the polar regions of the Moon.

It was a clone of its main competitor, the earlier MITS Altair 8800.

The Arabs greatly increased the knowledge of astronomical cycles, and many of the star names that remain in common use today, such as Aldebaran, Altair, Betelgeuse, Rigel and Vega retain the legacy of their language.

False-color image of the rapidly rotating star Altair, made with the MIRC imager on the CHARA array on Mount Wilson Observatory | Mt.

The people of Micronesia called Altair as Mai-lapa, " big / old breadfruit ", while the Māori people called this star as Poutu-te-rangi, " pillar of heaven ".

In astrology, the star Altair was ill-omened, portending danger from reptiles.

This star lies at a vertex of a widely spaced asterism called the Summer Triangle, which consists of the zero-magnitude stars Vega in the constellation Lyra and Altair in Aquila, plus the first magnitude star Deneb in Cygnus.

Bunjil himself became the star Altair and his two wives, the black swans, became stars on either side.

** Seventh Night of the Seventh Moon ; this was a one-day festival that was held in honor of the celestial love affair with deities associated with the star Altair ( the male cow-herd deity ) in the constellation Aquila and the star Vega ( the female weaver maid deity ) in the constellation Lyra.

The alpha star, Altair, is a vertex of the Summer Triangle asterism.

* α Aql ( Altair ) is the brightest star in this constellation and one of the closest naked-eye stars to Earth at a distance of 17 light-years.

Two major novae have been observed in Aquila: the first one was in 389 BC and was recorded as being as bright as Venus ; the other ( Nova Aquilae 1918 ) briefly shone brighter than Altair, the brightest star in Aquila.

Altair is a blue star in the constellation of Aquila.

In Australian Aboriginal mythology ( see dreamtime ), a Wurundjeri dreamtime story tells of a great eagle ; " the all powerful, ever watchful creator of the world ", named Bunjil, who " once gazed down upon his people from the star Altair and saw their wrong doing.

In a 4, 000-year-old legend, she came down from the Celestial Court and fell in love with the mortal Buffalo Boy ( or Cowherd ), ( associated with the star Altair ).

The Arabs greatly increased the knowledge of astronomy, and many of the star names that are commonly known today, such as Aldebaran, Altair, Betelgeuse, Rigel and Vega retain the legacy of their language.

Altair is a star in the Aquila constellation.

For the use of the star Altair or its solar system in fiction see Altair in fiction.

β Cassiopeiae is a variable star of the Delta Scuti type, in fact the second brightest of such stars in the sky after Altair.

Competing machines such as the Altair 8800 generally were programmed with front-mounted toggle switches and used indicator lights ( red LEDs, most commonly ) for output, and had to be extended with separate hardware to allow connection to a computer terminal or a teletypewriter machine.

As Steve Wozniak, the creator of Integer BASIC and the only person who understood it well enough to add floating point features, was busy with the Disk II drive and controller and with Apple DOS, Apple turned to Microsoft, who was the BASIC vendor of choice after their success with Altair BASIC, and licensed a 10 KB assembly language version of BASIC dubbed " Applesoft.

Altair rotates rapidly, with a velocity at the equator of approximately 286 km / s.

Satellite measurements made in 1999 with the Wide Field Infrared Explorer showed that the brightness of Altair fluctuates slightly, varying by less than a thousandth of a magnitude.

The home computer hacking subculture relates to the hobbyist home computing of the late 1970s, beginning with the availability of MITS Altair.

* Steve Dompier: Homebrew Computer Club member and hacker who worked with the early Altair 8800

* Class I: white and blue stars with broad heavy hydrogen lines, such as Vega and Altair.

The earliest models such as the Altair 8800 were often sold as kits to be assembled by the user, and came with as little as 256 bytes of RAM, and no input / output devices other than indicator lights and switches, useful as a proof of concept to demonstrate what such a simple device could do.

Altair 8800 Computer with 8 inch floppy disk system

January 1975 Popular Electronics with the Altair 8800 computer

The Altair BASIC interpreter was developed by Microsoft founders Paul Allen and Bill Gates with help from Monte Davidoff, using a self made Intel 8080 software simulator running on a PDP-10 minicomputer.

Ultimately he became what French calls a " premature hippy " who " had great faith in the power of cosmic rays, and claimed that there are extraterrestrials with translucent flesh on the planet Altair.

The Summer Triangle is an astronomical asterism involving an imaginary triangle drawn on the northern hemisphere's celestial sphere, with its defining vertices at Altair, Deneb, and Vega, being the brightest stars in the three constellations of Aquila, Cygnus, and Lyra.

** Goswina first met the Rowan when she, along with seven other young Talents, traveled to Altair for a course on Tower management and maintenance.

The system was then modified with the addition of an Altair upper stage to create an anti-satellite weapon with a 1100-mile ( 1700-km ) range.