Alpha Corvi is the fifth-brightest star in Corvus, the Crow, at magnitude 4.02. It also has the traditional names Alchiba or Al Minliar al Ghurab.
Alchiba, from Arabic, means "tent", and originally referred to the four fairly bright stars that make the distorted box of Corvus. Alpha Corvi is known as the Right Linchpin in Chinese. The USS Alchiba (AKA-6) was an Arcturus-class attack cargo ship named after Alchiba in Corvus, and served as a commissioned ship from 1941-1946.
Properties
Alchiba (the star!) is quite close to us, at a distance of only 48 light years; if it were only three times farther away, it would be invisible to the naked eye. Its mass is only about 1.2 times solar; this star is just younger and hotter than the Sun. Alchiba will die in 10 billion or so years as a common, relatively low-mass white dwarf. The temperature-luminosity status of Alchiba is consistent with its fairly low iron abundance (relative to hydrogen) of 25% that of the Sun.
Alchiba is a class F0 IV-V main-sequence star or subdwarf. Its luminosity (four suns) and temperature (7000 K) strongly suggest an ordinary hydrogen-fusing dwarf - in fact a subdwarf that shines less brightly than other stars of its temperature class. Subdwarfs are not really too faint for their temperatures, but too hot for their luminosities. This is the result of low metal contents in their atmospheres.
Alchiba is suspected of being a spectroscopic binary, though this has not yet been confirmed.
[Adapted from STARS by Jim Kaler, Professor Emeritus of Astronomy, University of Illinois]