| ⚹ | |
|---|---|
Sextile | |
| In Unicode | U+26B9⚹SEXTILE |
| Different from | |
| Different from | U+002A*ASTERISK |
| Related | |
| See also |
|
The sextile is an aspect in Astrology, a symbol to represent that aspect, and a typographical symbol used in telephony. The symbol represents the radii of a hexagon.
In astrology, a sextile aspect is one of 60º, which is 1⁄6 of the 360° ecliptic or 1⁄2 a trine (120°). Depending on the involved planets, an orb of 4-5° is allowed.
The more notable of the other uses of the symbol are as a star key on a telephone keypad [1] and on a Viewdata keyboard. This usage first appeared in a 1973 US patent filing (3,920,926). [2] Early prototypes of the touch-tone telephone used keys with a star and diamond shape. According to Bell engineer Doug Kerr, these were replaced with the sextile and hashtag because those could be typed or approximated with the ASCII character set or an office typewriter. [3]
On the 4 × 3 array, the symbol on the button [...] should have a shape easily identified as the general shape shown in Figure 2. [...] The symbol will be known as the star or the equivalent term in other languages.