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Tau Geminorum

Star in the constellation Gemini

Tau Geminorum
Summary

Star in the constellation Gemini

| x%=41.6 | y%=26.4 | b-v = +1.261 | u-b = +1.41

Tau Geminorum, Latinized from τ Geminorum, is a star in the northern zodiac constellation of Gemini. It has the apparent visual magnitude of +4.42, making it visible to the naked eye under suitably good seeing conditions. This star is close enough to the Earth that its distance can be measured using the parallax technique, which yields a value of roughly 392 ly.

Artist's illustration of the giant star Tau Geminorum (left) and its brown dwarf companion—the dark disk at right.

It is an evolved giant star of the spectral type K2 III. It has double the mass of the Sun and has expanded to 30 times the Sun's radius. Tau Geminorum is radiating 364 times as much radiation as the Sun from its expanded outer atmosphere at an effective temperature of 4,583 K, giving it the characteristic orange-hued glow of a K-type star. It appears to be rotating slowly with a projected rotational velocity of .

Substellar companion

This star has a brown dwarf companion designated Tau Geminorum b, whose mass is at least 20.6 Jupiter masses. It was discovered in 2004 by Mitchell and colleagues, who also discovered Nu Ophiuchi b at the same time. This brown dwarf takes 305 days to revolve around Tau Gem. It may also have a stellar companion; a magnitude 11, K0 dwarf at a projected separation of about .

Companion
(in order from star)MassSemimajor axis
(AU)Orbital period
(days)EccentricityInclinationRadius
b1.17––

References

References

  1. {{Cite Gaia DR3. 886479673643853952
  2. (June 2007). "Giants in the Local Region". The Astronomical Journal.
  3. (January 2008). "Rotational and Radial Velocities for a Sample of 761 HIPPARCOS Giants and the Role of Binarity". The Astronomical Journal.
  4. (1966). "UBVRIJKL photometry of the bright stars". Communications of the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory.
  5. (2004). "Four Substellar Companions Found Around K Giant Stars". Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society.
  6. (2023-12-01). "33 New Stellar Angular Diameters from the NPOI, and Nearly 180 NPOI Diameters as an Ensemble". The Astronomical Journal.
Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

k-type-giants brown-dwarfs gemini-(constellation) bayer-objects durchmusterung-objects flamsteed-objects henry-draper-catalogue-objects hipparcos-objects bright-star-catalogue-objects
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