Astronomy and Space

72 Cygni

72 Cygni is a star in the northern constellation of Cygnus, located 299 light years from the Sun and a member of the Hercules stream. It is visible to the naked eye as a faint, orange-hued star with an apparent visual magnitude of 4.87. 72 Cyg is moving closer to the Earth with a heliocentric radial velocity of −68 km/s. It has a relatively high proper motion, traversing the celestial sphere at the rate of 0.154″ per year. This is an aging giant star with a stellar classification of K0.5 III Fe0.5, where the suffix notation indicates a mild overabundance of iron in the spectrum. It has 1.7 times the mass of the Sun but has expanded to 14 times the Sun's radius. The star is radiating 69 times the Sun's luminosity from its enlarged photosphere at an effective temperature of 4,640 K. 72 Cygni has a wide companion at an angular separation of 66.1″, corresponding to a projected separation of 4,690 AU. This star has a J band (infrared) magnitude of 13.224±0.025 and a class of M5.

Also on this shelf

See also

• ▸David M. Walker (astronaut)
• ▸Dzogchen
• ▸KELT-9b

Uncatalogued shelf

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