ALTAIR Star. 3D Illustration Poster. Stock Photo

Altair is the brightest star in the constellation of Aquila and the twelfth-brightest star in the night sky. It has the Bayer designation Alpha Aquilae, which is Latinised from α Aquilae and abbreviated Alpha Aql or α Aql. Altair is an A-type main-sequence star with an apparent visual magnitude of 0.77 and is one of the vertices of the Summer Triangle asterism the other two vertices are marked by Deneb and Vega. It is located at a distance of 16.7 light-years (5.1 parsecs) from the Sun. Altair is currently in the G-cloud—a nearby interstellar cloud, an accumulation of gas and dust.