- Astatine is a chemical element; it has symbol At and atomic number 85. It is the rarest naturally occurring element in the Earth’s crust, occurring only as the decay product of various heavier elements. All of astatine’s isotopes are short-lived; the most stable is astatine-210, with a half-life of 8.1 hours. Consequently, a solid sample of the element has never been seen, because any macroscopic specimen would be immediately vaporized by the heat of its radioactivity.
- Muliphein (stars.astro.illinois.edu)
MULIPHEIN (Gamma Canis Majoris). The names Wezen and Hadar (in Arabic form) were once applied to a pair of stars. Though there are candidates, no one knows which pair. The uncertainty was in older times expressed as an Arabic word that in part referred to a pair of things that caused contention. The word itself was then taken as the pair, much mangled to Muliphein (sometimes seen as Muliphen), and then for no good reason given to the little star that Bayer later tagged as Gamma of Canis Major (while Wezen was given to our modern Delta, and Hadar to modern Beta Centauri).