Alsamaka

Not to be confused with al-Samaka al-Ṣuġrā (السمكة الصغرى).

Authors: Susanne M Hoffmann, Eric Mamajek, ASE Tech Team

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Alsamaka

Asterism Info
Native	السمكة الصغرى
Translation	The Smaller Fish
Position (2000)
Right ascension	335.8900971
Declination	52.22904672
Area	0 sq. deg.
Stars
Bright stars	1
Bayer/Flamsteed stars	1
Stars brighter than 3.00m	0
Brightest star	Alsamaka (4.44m)
Taxonomy
category of asterism	IAU-Star Name
IAU- constellations	Lac

Alsamaka is a modern star name adopted by the International Astronomical Union in the IAU-Catalog of Star Names (IAU-CSN). Its origin is Arabic. It is the name of the star β Lac in constellation Lacerta.

Concordance, Etymology, History

Andromeda with a fish next to her in a 15th century copy of as-Sufi's Book of Fixed Stars (Forschungsbibliothek Gotha).

Historically, the goddess depicted in the constellation Andromeda used to be a love goddess. In ancient Mesopotamia, she was called Inanna/ Ishtar and depicted with lions as attribute animal, while her variant in (As)Syria (northern and north of Mesopotamia) was depicted with (one or many) fish. In the area of Aleppo and Bambyke, she was called Derketo, and in Ashkelon worshipped in a syncretism with the Latin name Dea Syria and Greek Urania Aphrodite.

The version with the fish fits the (classical and modern) uranography of Andromeda and Pisces next to each other. It was adopted by Arabic authors, e.g. Al-Sufi, who have been keeping the variant of Andromeda surrounded by fish: not only the one in Pisces, but also at her feet (close to the Perseus region) and in the region of Lacerta.

The asterism al-Samaka al-Ṣuġrā (Arabic: السمكة الصغرى), [the Smaller Fish] is an Arabic name for an asterism forming a fish shape in Lacerta and Andromeda.

IAU Working Group on Star Names

In August 2016, IAU WGSN adopted the name Alsamaka for the star designated β Lac (3 Lac, HR 8538, HD 212496, HIP 110538). The star has apparent V magnitude 4.44 (Mermilliod & Mermilliod 1994) and its Gaia DR3 parallax is consistent with a distance of 51.8 parsecs (Bailer-Jones et al. 2021). The star is a red giant of spectral type G9IIIb Ca1 (Keenan & McNeil 1989).

The Washington Double Star catalog IDs β Lac as WDS J22236+5214 (CHR 108) with a reported secondary from a single observation in 1984 at separation 0.2 arcsecond (McAlister et al. 1987), however no previous or subsequent studies seem to show any hints of binarity. Notably, the combined analysis of the Hipparcos and Gaia DR3 astrometry by Kervella et al. (2022) found negligible change in the tangential velocity of β Lac between 1991 and 2016 (24+-38 m/s). Subsequent speckle and AO observations have not recovered the candidate companion, nor have any radial velocity surveys. While acknowledging that there is a single previously reported candidate companion that has not been confirmed by subsequent observations, β Lac thus far appears to be consistent with being a single star.

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Reference

• References (general)
• References (early modern)
• Ian Ridpath's website (Star Tales )