Avior
Place on the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram
a supergiant · 5 808 times brighter than the Sun in visible light · 8 640 catalogue stars behind it
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- Constellation
- Carina
- Apparent magnitude
- 1.86
- Absolute magnitude
- -4.58
- Distance
- 632 light years
- Temperature
- 4 158 K
- Spectral class
- K3III+B2:V
- Proper motion
- 0.030 ″/ years
- Radial velocity
- 2 km/s
- Right ascension
- 125.6283 °
- Declination
- -59.5097 °
- Catalogue numbers
- HR 3307 · HD 71129
№9059 / 9096
№8766 / 8923
№2485 / 8923
№7413 / 8786
№5343 / 9092
Origin of the name
The name was coined in the twentieth century by British navigators: this star of Carina had no historical name, and the air-navigation tables needed one.
What kind of star this is
A supergiant: the mass it was born with is too great to end quietly. Such a star lives for millions of years rather than billions, swells to the size of the inner planets' orbits, and ends as a supernova, leaving a neutron star or a black hole. On the diagram supergiants occupy the very top, where nothing else can be mistaken for them.