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50 Cassiopeiae

Star in the constellation Cassiopeia

50 Cassiopeiae

Star in the constellation Cassiopeia

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50 Cassiopeiae, also named Gang, is a white star in the northern constellation of Cassiopeia. In the past, it had been misidentified as a suspected nebula, and given the number NGC 771. The star is visible to the naked eye, having an apparent visual magnitude of +3.95. Based upon an annual parallax shift of , it is located 157 light years away. It is moving closer, having a heliocentric radial velocity of −18 km/s, and will approach to within 25.2 pc in 1.879 million years.

50 Cassiopeiae in optical light

It is an A-type main-sequence star with a stellar classification of A2 V. It is a suspected variable star with a very small amplitude. 50 Cas has an estimated 2.56 times the mass of the Sun, and about 2.5 times the Sun's radius. It is radiating 64 times the Sun's luminosity from its photosphere at an effective temperature of around 9,376 K.

The star was the brightest star in the occasionally used 1775 to 19th century constellation Custos Messium, typically drawn as a depiction of Charles Messier standing on top of the giraffe (Camelopardalis), between Cepheus and Cassiopeia.

In Chinese astronomy, this star is part of the asterism Gàng (槓, "Shaft"), itself part of Huá Gài (華蓋 "Canopy of the Emperor"). The IAU Working Group on Star Names approved the name Gang for this star on 25 December 2025, and it is now so entered in the IAU Catalog of Star Names. The name Huagai was adopted for ι Cassiopeiae, and Custos (after Custos Messium) for BE Camelopardalis.

References

References

  1. "MAST: Barbara A. Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes". Space Telescope Science Institute.
  2. "50 Cas".
  3. {{cite DR2
  4. (2012). "XHIP: An extended hipparcos compilation". Astronomy Letters.
  5. (February 2001). "Catalogue of Apparent Diameters and Absolute Radii of Stars (CADARS) - Third edition - Comments and statistics". Astronomy and Astrophysics.
  6. (October 2012). "Radial velocities for the HIPPARCOS-Gaia Hundred-Thousand-Proper-Motion project". Astronomy & Astrophysics.
  7. (August 2016). "The Correlation between Metallicity and Debris Disk Mass". The Astrophysical Journal.
  8. (2002). "New periodic variables from the Hipparcos epoch photometry". Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
  9. (2007). "Validation of the new Hipparcos reduction". Astronomy and Astrophysics.
  10. Wolfgang Steinicke. (19 August 2010). "Observing and Cataloguing Nebulae and Star Clusters: From Herschel to Dreyer's New General Catalogue". Cambridge University Press.
  11. [http://www.ianridpath.com/startales/custosmessium.html Ian Ridpath's Star Tales - Custos Messium]
  12. "IAU Catalog of Star Names".
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