Alpha Pegasi
Alpha Pegasi, formally named Markab, is the third-brightest star in the constellation of Pegasus and one of the four stars in the asterism known as the Great Square of Pegasus.
α Pegasi is the star's Bayer designation. It bore the traditional name Markab, which derived from an Arabic word مركب markab "the saddle of the horse", or is mistranscription of Mankib, which itself comes from an Arabic phrase منكب الفرس Mankib al-Faras " the Shoulder of the Horse" for Beta Pegasi.
Markab has a stellar classification of A0 IV, indicating that it is an A-type subgiant star that has exhausted the hydrogen at its core and has evolved beyond the main sequence. It is rotating rapidly, with a projected rotational velocity of 125 km/s giving a lower bound on the azimuthal velocity along the star's equator. The effective temperature of the photosphere is nearly 10,000 K and the star has expanded to nearly five times the radius of the Sun.Nomenclature
In 2016, the International Astronomical Union organized a Working Group on Star Names to catalog and standardize proper names for stars. The WGSN's first bulletin of July 2016 included a table of the first two batches of names approved by the WGSN, which included Markab for this star.
In Chinese, 室宿, meaning Encampment, refers to an asterism consisting α Pegasi and β Pegasi. Consequently, the Chinese name for α Pegasi itself is 室宿一, "the First Star of Encampment".
